As a modern Caravaggio, the Irish artist Francis Bacon has become a true icon of the damned artist. Credit for this goes to a myth fuelled by himself and his life: contrasts with his father, journeys in the thirties, homosexuality, tragic loves, his passion for gambling and pubs. His fame increased after his death in Madrid in 1992, stoked up by the extraordinary reappearance of some of his works in Toni Shafrazi’s New York gallery  in 1999 and by a sharp rise in quotations. Everybody will remember when in May 2007, at Sotheby’s New York, the painting “Study From Innocent X” executed in 1962 sold for 52,680,000 dollars, setting the artist’s personal record. At last this record has been thrashed.
Indeed during the “Contemporary Art” auction held on 14th May at Sotheby’s New York, a Francis Bacon work set a new double world record. The piece is “Triptych 1976” which, initially estimated at 70 million dollars,  achieved 86,281,000 dollars.
This hammer price, as we have mentioned, exceeded by more than 30 million dollars Bacon’s previous record and, furthermore, this sale to an anonymous collector set also another record: Bacon’s triptych is indeed the world’s most expensive work of contemporary art. The previous record was held by the American painter Mark Rothko, with  “White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavander on Rose)”, sold last year by Sotheby’s New York for 72.84 million dollars. Bacon’s work was considered the most important remaining in private hands: for the last thirty years, it has always been in the same collection that had bought it from a gallery in Paris in 1977. After the sale, Tobias Meyer, the auctioneer and person in charge of the international department of contemporary art at Sotheby’s said: “A historical auction where the global intercommunity of Contemporary Art has proven to have particular thirst for masterpieces”.
“Triptych 1976” is a piece of rare beauty, rich in symbolism, complexity and allegories, through which  Francis Bacon expresses his personal existential tragedy. Slaughtered meat. Bleeding wounds.  Sardonic smiles. Wide open mouths. Agonized and obscene bodies that leave little of human anatomy. Everything is putrescent.
This work is absolutely a horror for the spectator. Looking at it you find inebriated birds of prey at a feast of blood. On the three panels, disfigured faces offered to witness the ineluctability of human history. A composition of extremely great harshness, in which in the central panel you can see, or rather you can perceive, the existential agony of human beings. Before this masterpiece, the public has a double role: victim and executioner, observing this man-like figure tortured by three beasts of prey, symbol of Bacon’s inner demons, which belong to the whole mankind.
Francis Bacon’s portraits are not generated by his fantasy, but are models drawn from the cinema, photography, history and various sources. Art critics claim that for “Triptych 1976”, the Irish artist drew from Greek classical literature. Many academics believe that the masterpiece was inspired to Prometheus, mythological figure punished by Zeus and chained to a rock of the Caucasus, where an eagle (symbol of the power which he had rebelled against) will eat his liver forever. Other more current interpretations hold that in “Triptych 1976” Bacon refers to the Aeschylus’ trilogy “Oresteia,” particularly for the smell of death that it evokes. Bacon and his Aeschylus: “The stench of human blood is joy for my heart”. With a total value of 362 million dollars, including commissions, the Contemporary Art auction exceeded every previous result of contemporary art auctions, disproving rumours about a market crisis. We can truly say that for auctions of works belonging to the second post-war period, it has been a real triumph in New York this week.
(Article translated by Giorgina Arcuri)