Bacon, an inveterate gambler, usually emphasized the role of chance when explaining his “attacks” on the canvass. However, close scrutiny of archival material from the studio shows that there was a deliberative side to the artist. Shepard says that Bacon “conveyed the impression that he approached the canvass with little or no idea what he would paint. In fact, during his lifetime he referred to certain key sources, for example the photography of Eadweard Muybridge, or images of Velasquez and Rembrandt. We’ve had the opportunity to look in detail through the contents of the studio and to establish closer links between specific texts and images and the paintings he produced.”
     The exhibition includes hundreds of Muybridge’s shots of nude figures. We also get Peter Beard’s photos of big game hunting, wildlife, and animal carcasses. John Deakin’s iconic images of Bacon, his home at 7 Reece Mews, his lovers and friends, and scenes from 1960’s London, are all engrossing. Crucially, these have become more understandable as source material for an artist who rejected the idea of painting from life.
     A more forensic example of the connection between the studio objects and Bacon’s techniques can be seen in the “slashed” canvasses. Occupying their own room in the exhibition are eleven paintings where Bacon tore or cut sections. Again, as a spectacle they are impressive in their own right. The gaping wounds in the canvass, ripped out of color and form, have a melancholy beauty of their own. What we get from them is a terrible absence: of head, of body. As an analytical resource the preciousness of these items cannot be overstated. Shepard explains this in her essay “A Game of Chance: The Media and Techniques of Francis Bacon”. She says, “Bacon destroyed many [paintings] with a knife, leaving only a tantalizing glimpse of the painting that might have been. However, this gives unprecedented scope for technical examinations, including sampling and analysis that would be ethically problematic in finished works.” Incisions in the canvasses permit analyses of Bacon’s painting process, showing how his method evolved toward control, despite the artist’s insistence on chaos.
     And what about the casual viewer? Firstly, it’s hard to be casual in front of Bacon’s work. It is still unsettling today. Figurative yet dehumanized, combining such disparate influences as meat carcasses and mouth disease, and yet appealing to a classical sense of the body, it is of such complexity that there is no easy access to it. The type of experience a visitor can have at the exhibition is not easily typified, although always rewarding.
     For instance, looking at the studio itself can feel rather voyeuristic. Spectators step into a glass viewing portal cut into its wall to survey the contents. Mounds of newspaper clippings, magazines, books, cardboard, and paint materials all attest to Bacon’s penchant for “deeply ordered chaos.” A sturdy easel that somewhat recalls a guillotine stands glaringly empty, like a big iron question mark. There is something ghostly about the claustrophobic space. Such a busy, energetic room, full of the evidence of creation now crystallized, becomes tragically poignant without its ebullient animator.
     Among the finished paintings on show is a number of rarely seen items, most notably Untitled (Sea), a 1954 painting with no ostensible figure in it. There’s also a 1969 portrait of Bacon’s friend Henrietta Moraes, whose effect is simply indescribable. It has to be seen. But of all the paintings in the show the most striking is Figure in a Landscape (1945). If terrible beauty seems paradoxical, this painting alone evokes it. The text next to it simply states that the work depicts Eric Hall sleeping in Hyde Park.