>> Read all Thomas's reviews.

The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter   {Reviewed by THOMAS} A slice from the rump of a pig, he thought, raw and pink and veined with fat or crisped like a piece of dirty cardboard, is there a patron saint for a pig in this condition, he wondered, some other Francis, all animals are meat, some antisaint worthy of the name, his name, some name, insistent on the name and possessed of the rare ability to display both sides of his face when viewed from any angle, we’re little more than meat, he thought, meat animated by who knows what, some electricity wanting nothing more than to expend itself, arking between terminals, blurring instants, do and be done, the pain of the building charge, insufferability, release, vacuity, the whole works, no respite, images decaying on the retina, imitations but imitations failed to such an extent that they resemble originality, a resemblance only, each staled from inception, rancid cigarette breath overlaid with peppermint or mince, rot, some carcass that no amount of blows can animate, the painting “pretending it confronted death when all it did was illustrate again and again a lazy fear of it,” as Porter puts in this little book The Death of Francis Bacon, Porter nonetheless obsessed, splicing himself into the mind of the painter as he lies on his death-bed in Spain, hospitalised, wheezing, morphined, memories rising, incohering, there is no doubt some degree of biographical knowledge on display but there is no need to recognise this, it is not conveyed and who cares in any case, he thought, the degree of Porter’s invention is of no importance, these words the words of the writer ventirloquising who, Bacon, himself, the paintings, ventriloquising the moment of painting, if that can be termed ventriloquising, not “an attempt to get art history out of the way and let the paintings speak,” as Porter claims, or not in the sense that the paintings would or could or should speak to us and tell us anything other than the painting experienced from the point of view of the paint, not then representational but visceral, physical, coloured matter, paint has no interest in the image, such must be negotiated between the other parties, and there are many who would force meaning on the paint beyond the meaning it enjoys just by being spread when wet on canvas, or on whatever, “it’s an attempt to get at the sense of what is looming up behind the person being hurt,” Porter writes, “it’s an attempt to hold catastrophe still so you can get a proper sniff at it,” though I would say, he thought, it’s an attempt to decatastrophise through overemphasis, to forget through iteration, though it is unclear, he thought, whether these attempts are Bacon’s, Porter’s, the viewer’s, the reader’s, or whose, no matter, what if words came out where ordinarily you would expect paint, or vice versa, is this the nub of Porter’s project, he wondered, to reach into his subject and squeeze out words, not as he spoke but as he painted, “the mouth is the habit the eye has to teach,” writes Porter, words worked wet, out on the page, “it is exhausting to behold such huge quantities of paint being wasted,” writes Porter, perhaps as himself, but no such truck with his words, there on the page, each reading revealing a little less and what was there after all in the first place to reveal, this life, a little more than nothing but not much more.