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Hello and thank you for downloading The Witness Podcast, History As Told by the People Who

There. I'm Vincent Dowd.

For 30 years the painter Francis Bacon, hugely acclaimed and hugely controversial,

lived and worked in a tiny overflowing home in London.

After Bacon died, it was decided to transfer everything from his studio

to an exact reconstruction in Dublin. That meant 7,000 individual items to shift from tiny scraps of paper to drips of paint.

Reese Muse is a small London. to drips of paint.

Reese Muse is a small London side street here in wealthy South Kensington. Francis Bacon moved in in 1961.

For the next 30 years, it would also be where Bacon painted, creating some of the most disturbing images in modern art.

Francis Bacon's portraits are seldom easy to look at. His images can be nightmarish. He wasn't

interested in making a clean photographic image, yet often he worked from photographs, even with portraits of

lovers.

There are people that I know very well, know the contours of their face, but how can I bring back this image of life? I'm driven

into hoping that accident will give me forms that will bring back the appearance more

violently than any illustration can do. Bacon delved into the darkest areas of the human psyche.

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