Michael Peppiatt – författare

THE TIMES AND WATERSTONES BEST ART BOOK OF 2023'Intimate and insightful . . . reads like a novel by Samuel Beckett’ Paul Theroux A portrait of one of the twentieth century’s greatest sculptors from one of our most eminent art historiansToday the work of Alberto Giacometti is world-famous and his sculptures sell for record-breaking prices. But from his early days as an unknown outsider to the end of a dramatic international career, Giacometti lived in the same hovel of a studio in Paris. It was Paris that made him, and he in turn immortalised the city through his art.Arriving in Paris from the Swiss Alps in 1922, Giacometti was shaped not only by his relationships with remarkable artists and writers – from Picasso, Breton and Dalí to Sartre, Beauvoir and Beckett – but by the everyday life, pre-war and post-war, of Paris itself. His distinctive figures emerged from the city’s unique atmosphere: the crumbling grey stone of its humbler streets and the café-terraces buzzing with radical ideas and racy gossip.In Giacometti in Paris, Michael Peppiatt, who spent thirty years documenting the Parisian art world and mixing with many of the people Giacometti knew, brilliantly charts the course of the artist’s life and work. From falling in and out with the Surrealists to years of artistic anguish, from devotion to his mother to intense friendships, tragic love affairs and a fraught marriage, this is an intimate portrait of an outstanding artist in exceptional times.

The image of a tortured genius working in near isolation has long dominated our conceptions of the artist's studio. Examples are abound: think Jackson Pollock dripping resin on a cicada carcass in his shed in the Hamptons. But times have changed; ever since Andy Warhol declared his art space a 'factory', artists have begun to envision themselves as the leaders of production teams, and their sense of what it means to be in the studio has altered just as dramatically as their practices. "The Studio Reader" pulls back the curtain from the art world to reveal the real activities behind artistic production. What does it mean to be in the studio? What is the space of the studio in the artist's practice? How do studios help artists envision their agency and, beyond that, their own lives? This forward-thinking anthology features an all-star array of contributors, ranging from Svetlana Alpers, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Storr to Daniel Buren, Carolee Schneemann, and Buzz Spector, each of whom locates the studio both spatially and conceptually - at the center of an art world that careens across institutions, markets, and disciplines.A companion for anyone engaged with the spectacular sites of art at its making, "The Studio Reader" reconsiders this crucial space as an actual way of being that illuminates our understanding of both artists and the world they inhabit.

This book, a biography on Francis Bacon, is inspired by the friendship the author had with Bacon and based on records of the conversations that took place since 1963. The book forms the first comprehensive account of the artist's life and his work.

This book, a biography on Francis Bacon, is inspired by the friendship the author had with Bacon and based on records of the conversations that took place since 1963. The book forms the first comprehensive account of the artist's life and his work.

A new selection of letters, statements and interviews reveal the preoccupations, thoughts and ideas of Francis Bacon, one of the 20th century’s most influential and important artists. The documents selected for Francis Bacon: A Self-Portrait in Words illustrate Bacon’s sharp wit and ability to express complex ideas in highly personal, memorable language. Included here are not only letters to friends, patrons and fellow artists, but also intriguing notes and lists of paintings. They often come with a sketch as an aide-mémoire or an injunction to himself as he worked in the studio, and many have only come to light since his death. Bacon’s letters mirror and reveal his dominant preoccupations at different points throughout his long career. Most of Bacon’s letters have never been published and include several that he wrote to the author. Particularly intriguing is the record of a dream that he jotted down, outlining impossibly beautiful paintings he had conjured up in his sleep. Together with photographs, archive material and works by the artist are numerous reproductions of Bacon’s characteristic handwriting, from the briefest jottings and notes to more extensive letters and statements. Bacon frequently came up with memorable epithets and definitions. He delighted in doing with words what he set out to do in painting: 'I like phrases that cut me.' Michael Peppiatt explores the personal legacy of one of the 20th century’s most important painters and presents a compelling verbal self-portrait that reveals both man and artist.

Francis Bacon was one of most elusive and enigmatic creative geniuses of the twentieth century. However much his avowed aim was to simplify both himself and his art, he remained a deeply complex person. Bacon was keenly aware of this underlying contradiction, and whether talking or painting, strove consciously towards absolute clarity and simplicity, calling himself ‘simply complicated’. Until now, this complexity has rarely come across in the large number of studies on Bacon’s life and work. Francis Bacon: Studies for a Portrait shows a variety of Bacon’s many facets, and questions the accepted views on an artist who was adept at defying categorization. The essays and interviews brought together here span more than half a century. Opening with an interview by the author in 1963, the year that he met Bacon, there are also essays written for exhibitions, memoirs and reflections on Bacon’s late work, some published here for the first time. Included are recorded conversations with Bacon in Paris that lasted long into the night, and an overall account of the artist’s sources and techniques in his extraordinary London studio. This is an updated edition of Francis Bacon: Studies for a Portrait (2008), published for the first time in a paperback reading book format. It brings this fascinating artist into closer view, revealing the core of his talent: his skill for marrying extreme contradictions and translating them into immediately recognizable images, whose characteristic tension derives from a life lived constantly on the edge.With 14 illustrations, 7 in colour

Engaging encounters, personal anecdotes and jargon-free critical insights into some of the liveliest creative minds in modern art, by an international art world insider. Michael Peppiatt has been studying, meeting and writing about artists for almost sixty years. In this brilliant selection of his biographical writing, he introduces us to some of the best-known artists of the modern age, from Vincent van Gogh and Pierre Bonnard to Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. We follow the writer into the studios of some of these individuals, observing their creative process at close quarters, and gaining insight into the way their personal histories have shaped and directed their work, bringing both the art and its maker alive. Peppiatt meets an elderly but spirited Sonia Delaunay in Paris to hear her revive long-forgotten worlds; visits Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies, ‘the alchemist’, and joins him on late-night walks around Barcelona; interviews poet Jacques Dupin, in his pyjamas, on his memories of Giacometti; makes the life-changing acquaintance of Bacon in the bars and clubs of Soho; and gives us a considered opinion on Picasso’s trousers. These essays are essential reading for anyone wanting to find out more about the lives of some of the great creative figures of modern times, from a writer who is not only an authority on art, but also one of the liveliest and most entertaining observers of artists and their worlds.

Published in 1996, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma was the first in-depth study of the artist's life. It has not been superseded.In this substantially revised, updated edition - to coincide with the artist's centenary, which will be celebrated from autumn 2008 through summer 2009 - Peppiatt will incorporate confidential material Bacon gave him, which he did not include in the first edition. This valuable, first-hand information comes from the hundreds of conversations Bacon had with Peppiatt, often late into the night, over thirty years, particularly during the periods Bacon spent living and working in Paris. It includes insights into Bacon's intimate relationships, his artistic convictions and his general view of life, as well as his acerbic comments on his contemporaries.Peppiatt will draw on some of the fascinating information that has become available in the fifteen years since the artist died. Once jealously guarded by the artist himself, the contents of Bacon's studio can now be freely consulted; Peppiatt has had privileged access to these archives, and he will show how a number of recent discoveries - including wholly unexpected source material - have radically changed the way we look at Bacon's work. Similarly, his recent research into the artist's background - his tortured affair with the sadistic Peter Lacy in Tangier, for instance, and the baffling circumstances of his death in Madrid - will shed light on unexplored areas of Bacon's life and work. Peppiatt will also unveil new information from several people who knew Bacon intimately and who have never gone on record previously.

While working on ‘Bacon–Giacometti’, a major exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel in 2018, the curator, writer, and art historian Michael Peppiatt carried out extensive research on the relationship between the two artists. “At one point I felt I could almost hear the two of them talking”, he revealed.For Peppiatt, the dialogue between Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti has been ‘turning slowly’ in his mind ever since Bacon told him in detail about his encounters with the Swiss artist, while the latter was in London in 1965 to supervise the preparations for his major exhibition at the Tate. This book, written in the form of a play, is about an imagined encounter between the two men.On the evening imagined by Peppiatt, Bacon and Giacometti enjoy a lavish dinner at Wheeler’s fish restaurant, then go on to the Colony Room—Bacon’s favourite club in Soho—to pursue their freely flowing conversation about life, art, and their mutual friends. After a while, the club begins to empty out, but the two artists, sensing that they may never have another occasion to talk, order more champagne...

While working on 'Bacon-Giacometti', a major exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel in 2018, the curator, writer, and art historian Michael Peppiatt carried out extensive research on the relationship between the two artists. "At one point I felt I could almost hear the two of them talking", he revealed.For Peppiatt, the dialogue between Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti has been 'turning slowly' in his mind ever since Bacon told him in detail about his encounters with the Swiss artist, while the latter was in London in 1965 to supervise the preparations for his major exhibition at the Tate. This book, written in the form of a play, is about an imagined encounter between the two men.On the evening imagined by Peppiatt, Bacon and Giacometti enjoy a lavish dinner at Wheeler's fish restaurant, then go on to the Colony Room-Bacon's favourite club in Soho-to pursue their freely flowing conversation about life, art, and their mutual friends. After a while, the club begins to empty out, but the two artists, sensing that they may never have another occasion to talk, order more champagne...

Francis Bacon and Michael Peppiatt were close friends for over thirty years. As Peppiatt, the editor of this volume, tells us in his illuminating Introduction, the two would regularly embark on night-time “odysseys around London and Paris”, “ordering extravagant vintages, raising toasts to all and sundry, talking and laughing immoderately.” Francis Bacon’s conversation was witty, provocative, and profound. In this volume, his long-time friend, curator, chronicler, and biographer has gathered Bacon’s most memorable aphorisms, evoking both the force of the artist’s personality and the range of his interests.These sayings, assembled for the first time in Only Too Much Is Enough, form a brilliant accompaniment to Bacon’s works, conveying not only a sceptical and sometimes disquieting outlook on human relationships, but also keen insights into his creative process.

Francis Bacon is considered one of the most important painters of the 20th century. A major exhibition of his paintings at the Royal Academy of Arts, planned for 2020 but postponed because of the pandemic, explores the role of animals in his work – not least the human animal.Having often painted dogs and horses, in 1969 Bacon first depicted bullfights. In this powerful series of works, the interaction between man and beast is dangerous and cruel, but also disturbingly intimate. Both are contorted in their anguished struggle, and the erotic lurks not far away: ‘Bullfighting is like boxing,’ Bacon once said. ‘A marvellous aperitif to sex.’ Twenty-two years later, a lone bull was to be the subject of his final painting.In this fascinating publication – a significant addition to the literature on Bacon – expert authors discuss Bacon’s approach to animals and identify his varied sources of inspiration, which included wildlife photography and the motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge. They contend that, by considering animals in states of vulnerability, anger and unease, Bacon was able to lay bare the role of instinctual behaviour in the human condition.Images below, left to right:Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Fragment of a Crucifixion, 1950. Oil and cotton wool on canvas, 140 x 108.5 cm. Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Photo Hugo MaertensFrancis Bacon (1909-1992), Study for Portrait (with Two Owls), 1963. Oil on canvas, 198.1 x 144.8 cm. Private collection. Photo Prudence Cuming Associates LtdFrancis Bacon (1909-1992), Man with Dog, 1953. Oil on canvas, 152 x 117 cm. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Gift of Seymour H. Knox Jr, 1955, inv. K1955:3. Photo Prudence Cuming Associates LtdAll images © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2020.

In this richly illustrated volume, Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso emerge as the defining forces behind the modern image of the human figure.By placing the work of Bacon and Picasso in sustained visual and conceptual conversation, this publication examines one of the most consequential artistic relationships of the 20th century. Over five decades shaped by political upheaval, war, and cultural rupture, both artists pursued an uncompromising interrogation of what it means to be human—through violence and vulnerability, erotic tension and psychological exposure, historical trauma and private anguish.The book traces parallel investigations into the body under pressure: the scream, crucifixion imagery, the distortion of flesh, and the persistent return to Old Master sources. Picasso’s radical formal experiments of the 1920s and 1930s form a crucial point of departure for Bacon’s earliest paintings, while later chapters follow how each artist developed distinct yet intersecting responses to suffering, power, and desire.The publication advances new research into the literary, psychological, and visual frameworks the two artists share, revealing how modern life—war, spectacle, intimacy, and catastrophe—shaped their radically different yet profoundly connected treatments of the human presence. With contributions grounded in close visual analysis and historical rigor, this volume offers the most comprehensive account to date of their intertwined legacies.