//Rug c.1929 by Francis Bacon. 212 x 126 x 1.5cm. Private collection currently on loan to Tate Britain. © The Estate Of Francis Bacon//

//Stool, c. 1930. Painted and laminated wood 40.5 x 51.5 x 38cm. This appeared on Antiques Roadshow in 2013 – the owner explained that her  grandparents bought it from Bacon after he was featured in The Studio magazine//

//Invitation to 1929 selling exhibition, from Richard Shone’s article on Bacon the furniture designer in The Burlington magazine, 1996//

I’m fascinated by the modernist furniture and interiors produced by Francis Bacon before his emergence as “Bacon Agonistes”, in critic John Richardson’s memorable phrase.

This occurred in 1933 with the selection of Bacon’s painting Crucifixion by Herbert Read for his 1933 survey Art Now: An Introduction To The Theory Of Modern Painting And Sculpture; tellingly, the work by the 24-year-old was juxtaposed in the layout with Picasso’s 1929 Female Bather With Raised Arms. Picasso was the only 20th century artist who “fully captivated Bacon”, wrote his biographer Michael Peppiatt, while the artist said he decided to abandon furniture and interiors when he saw an exhibition of Picasso’s Dinard paintings at Paul Rosenberg’s Paris gallery in the late 20s.

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Tags: Art Now, Crucifixion 1933, Daniel Farson, David Sylvester, Douglas Cooper, Eileen Gray, Female Bather With Raised Arms, Fernand Léger, Francis Bacon, Gustave Miklos, Herbert Read, Ivan da Silva Bruhns, Jean Shepeard, John Richardson, Majid Boustany, Michael Peppiatt, Pablo Picasso, Patrick White

Reading Amanda Lear’s engaging out-of-print memoir My Life With Salvador Dalí brings back memories of a visit to the Dalí Theatre-Museum (“the largest surrealistic object in the world”) in Figueres in 1988.

In the tower of the museum, the “seedy old conjuror” (per the description by John Richardson in his waspish collection of art world pen portraits Sacred Monsters,  Sacred Masters) was lying on his sickbed; Dalí died just a few months later, in January 1989.

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Tags: Alice Cooper, Amanda Lear, Garcia De Pou, Humphrey Burton, John Richardson, Russell Harty, Sacred Monsters Sacred Masters, Salvador Dali