8 
MuseoMag   N°IV 2024 
OBSESSION AND DESIRE 
John Deakin, Francis Bacon and George Dyer on the Orient Express to Athens, 1965, Gelatin silver print, 19 x 19cm 
© 
The 
Estate 
of 
Francis 
Bacon. 
All 
rights 
reserved, 
DACS/Artimage 
2021. 
Photo: 
John 
Deakin 
single bare lightbulb, the artist processing his grief 
in compulsive reenactments and retellings of his 
lover’s suicide. 
In an interview shortly after Dyer’s death, Bacon 
noted; “People say you forget about death, but 
you don’t. After all, I’ve had a very unfortunate life, 
because all the people I’ve been really fond of have 
died. And you don’t stop thinking about them; time 
doesn’t heal. But you concentrate on something 
which was an obsession, and what you would have 
put into your obsession with the physical act you 
put into your work.” Both with Lacy and Dyer, we see 
the artist visiting and revisiting their face and form 
obsessively, contorting them almost beyond reco- 
gnition in a visceral act of memorialisation. 
It is interesting to consider Czech writer Milan 
Kundera’s observation here; “Bacon’s portraits are 
a question about the limits of the self. To what 
degree of distortion does an individual still remain 
himself?” This constant renegotiation of the bounda- 
ry between the self and other is an intriguing aspect 
of Bacon’s work; by appropriating his lovers’ phy- 
sical features and very identity by painterly means, 
they become an extension of his own psyche. 
Thus, when we look at a work like Three Studies for 
Portrait of George Dyer, we see both Dyer and Bacon 
staring back at us, flickering between the two inter- 
mittently. This complex oscillation between the 
self and other is perhaps part of the reason why 
Bacon’s renderings of his lovers have produced 
some of the most powerful images in his oeuvre.