All Too Human 

Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life

Tate Britain 28 February - 27 August 2018 

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/all-too-human

Study for Portrait II
(after the Life Mask of William Blake), 1955
Francis Bacon

'All Too Human' is a fascinating exhibition and exquisitely reveals the essence of what makes us human through a collection of poignant and intimate paintings. The sometimes unflinching honesty revealed in the artists's brush marks show the viewer the intense observations and communicative exchanges between painter and model. The 'scrutiny of the raw and factual aspects of life' is plain to see and there is an essence of embodiment within each painting. Bacon's 'Study for Portrait II' (1955) was based on the life mask from the painter and poet William Blake which he saw at the National portrait Gallery, London. The painting is complex, with layers of paint applied against the dark ground. The pinks and mauves suggest life rather than a waxen image of life passed. The human flesh is brought to life through Bacon's broad strokes but also powerfully conveys (the artist's) pain and loneliness. 

Mammet (Gilbert), 2018
Sara Jayne Harris

Mammets (Mathilda, Amos, Ruth, Harriet), 2018
Sara Jayne Harris

The intense pink colouring of 'Mammet(Gilbert)' (2018) has been used to convey a sense of otherness and of embodiment. I realise I have been adding a blush of pink in every Mammet figure so that a suggestion of life has been breathed into these works, heightening their sense of being embodied. 

Mammet (Todd), 2018
Sara Jayne Harris 

Girl with a Kitten, 1947
Lucien Freud 

I have always admired the dramatic tension in Freud's Girl with a Kitten (1947); the cat staring directly at the viewer, helpless in the figure's tight grip  (Kathleen Garman, Freud's wife at the time of painting). There is an intensity in both the figures' gazes but also that of the artist. The close up details picked out by the artist's sable-haired brushes, scrutinises the surfaces minutely. The frizzy hair is electrified by the static energy, palpable in the tableau. The subdued palette does nothing to temper down this embodied energy  but rather instills a more resonating frisson. For Mammet Todd(2018)I have included my own hair, adding to the strangeness and tension but also as a device for talismanic activity and embodiment. The blush of pink and mauves on the pale, white face brings a strange life to this figure. 

Euan Uglow
quoted in a recorded interview with Martin Golding, March 1989

All the artists in this exhibition observed their models intensely  and scrutinised their subjects; as Euan Uglow stated in an interview with Martin Golding (1989) "Nobody has ever looked at you as intensively as I have."