Francis Bacon and 3 Benefits of Chaos for Creatives

By Thea Fiore Bloom, PhD

“Everything was torn, everything was dirty, everything was … wonderful.”

That’s how art historian John Richard described his friend Francis Bacon’s studio.

Bacon (1909 -1992) is famous for his brooding portraits of popes, distorted triptychs and the occasional depiction of a slab of hanging meat.

But here are two things most people don’t know about Bacon:

 1. Bacon was one of the top-earning artists of all time.

When Bacon died in 1992, his estate was worth over 20 million in today’s dollars.

In 2013, Christie’s sold Bacon’s “Three Studies of Lucien Freud” for the then-record-breaking price of $142.4 million. 

That’s more than van Gogh’s “Portrait of Dr. Gachet”, Rothko’s “No. 10”, or Edvard Munch’s “Scream” fetched back then.

You and I probably didn’t become artists expecting payouts like that.

I only mention the money because it validates the second thing most folks don’t know about Bacon; it’s the thing I’m fascinated by. 

And that’s this.

 2. Francis Bacon had one of the most chaotic studios of all time.

I am suggesting here that the success of one of the greatest figurative painters of the 20th century was supported (not inhibited) by his explosively chaotic mess.

So, if you think your studio is bad, I want you to have a gander at Bacon’s.

 

You Think Your Art Studio is Bad? Look at Bacon’s

If you can see the image of Bacon’s studio here, let your eyes wander down to the floor.

You may notice it’s not a floor, per se.

Bacon’s floor was more like a landscape of Dixie cup mountains and magazine-page valleys.

After seeing Bacon’s floor, you may be thinking, ‘Man, I’m Marie Kondo compared to this guy.’

I smile when I think that Bacon didn’t apologize for his floor piles, desk piles, or wall piles.

In fact, he referred to them as necessary “compost” for future paintings.

As Michelle Doyle wrote in The Royal Academy UK:

“By the time Bacon died, his studio floor was feet-deep in thousands of photographs and magazines – a mix of high and low cultural images, historic paintings, scientific drawings and photographs as well as reproductions of his own work […]. These images are embedded in his paintings, from subtle hints, to direct references to the Old Masters, news, and current events.” 

Bacon’s piles were vital to his process; in a 1991 interview with photographer Francis Gocobetti,  Bacon said:

“Images […] help me find and realize ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people’s plates.” 

Granted, most of us don’t want to work among mounds of moulding Dixie cups, but increasing our chaos tolerance, by even a smidge, can grant creatives like us big boons. 

And we’ll get to three of them in one minute. 

But first, want to hear a wild story about what happened to all those Baconian floor piles?

Let’s go.

The Story of Bacon’s Studio

After he died in 1992, Bacon’s divine river of chaos at 7 Reece Mews, South Kensington, in London, sat silent – for years.

It served only to house some very happy mice and spiders.

But in 1998, the visionary Irish curator Dr. Barbara Dawson secured the donation (from Bacon’s generous friend and sole heir, John Edwards) of everything in Francis Bacon’s extant studio.

I mean every single thing.

 

Curators tenderly tagged thousands of Bacon’s:

• Crusty paint tubes,
• Upended champagne boxes,
• Molding Dixie cups,
• The aged paneling he wiped his brushes on,
• The leaking skylight to his roof,
• His last finished work
• His rusty radiator,
• The canvases he slashed,
• The dangling bulb he worked by,
• Even the dust was bagged and carted away to be reassembled for posterity.

Dawson and her team then reassembled most of Bacon’s things into a permanent exhibition at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, Ireland, where you can see it today.

So let’s get back to the big benefits of embracing a little disorder for artists and writers like you and me.

3 Benefits of Chaos for Creatives, Inspired by Francis Bacon’s Studio

 

1st Benefit of Chaos for Creatives:

Permission to Roam

I love what Lithuanian artist/writer Ksenia Odintsova said about chaos:

“Creativity rarely starts from order. For many artists, the early stages of making — the sketches, the impulses, the fragments of ideas — feel chaotic and scattered. This chaos isn’t a flaw in the process; it is the process. The mind needs space to roam, collide with itself, and generate unexpected connections.” 

Can we see our occasional struggle with chaos as part of our creative process, not a flaw in it? 

Can we try to look at our own piles of paint tubes, magazines, and the occasional yellow rubber chicken in our studios, or on our desk, not as things to be ashamed of but as resources? 

Resources that lead to our best ideas?

Which brings us to our second benefit.

2nd Benefit of Chaos for Creatives:

Chaos Births Meaning

Our brightest creative ideas often well up out of passionate disorder.

Odintsova also said:

“Artistic chaos is the raw material from which meaning emerges. Without dissonance or contradiction, the work risks becoming predictable, safe, or emotionally flat. Chaos is the moment before clarity, the spark that activates imagination.” 

So bearing this in mind, your mound-y studio floor, or the thirty-three journals you are writing in at the same time, are nothing to be ashamed of, right?

They are simply part of the chaos piles you need to leave in your wake to get to your brightest idea. 

Just like Bacon did.

Your brightest idea is often the one that leaves you giddy and excited to begin.

Our final benefit is great for folks like me who worry that if I give in to chaos, I will never transition out of it, never move towards completion.

 

“All painting is an accident.

But it’s also not an accident, because one must select what part of the accident one chooses to preserve.”

– Francis Bacon

 

3rd Benefit of Chaos for Creatives:

Chaos Can Equal Completion

Sometimes we fear that if we let too many juicy ideas swirl around, we won’t have the inner authority and felt sense to pick the right one.

But you will. 

We also fear that if we relax into the chaos, if we celebrate it, if we enjoy the sensuality of squishing our fingers in paint without a purpose, cover our floor and walls with drips, or if we write stories we never even want to see the light of day, we will be found years later drooling into a cup.

But you won’t.

We worry that if we don’t clean up, we’ll never exit the chaos; we’ll never focus again; and we’ll be featured in some show about hoarders.

But the film crew isn’t coming, I promise. 

As I get older, I see chaos as a necessary, nearly sacred threshold I must pass through before I can get anywhere near focus.

How about you?

Artist and writer Helen Wells posits creatives can come to peace with the chaos of creating when they see artmaking as a two-mode process.

Scatter then focus, says Wells.

Here’s what that means to me.

Scatter Then Focus

Step 1: Scatter/Expand

Scatter to celebrate chaos.

Scatter to birth your best ideas.

In other words, scatter to expand your wings-wide.

Only after that healthy, luscious expansion is it possible to focus.

Step 2: Focus/Contract

I see focus as an act of contraction.

Contract to select the one exciting project or series you would create right now if no one was watching.

If you’re excited to start, it will be easier to finish because you want to be there. 

Like I tell my writing coaching clients who are having trouble focusing; expand fully, then contract.

But I don’t always listen to the advice I give clients.

For example, I know I should not edit material I haven’t had time to stretch out into and experiment with.

But I still edit it anyway.

That’s contracting before expanding.

And it makes for lackluster writing.

I hope you grant yourself the time to practice the courageous act of letting your unique, wild-wide-winged, voice out into a piece before you edit it.

Allow time for mess, accidents, and wonder, as Bacon did.

Only after the storm has passed is it time to select, polish, and refine.

Yes, it takes longer this way.

Yes, there’ll be more chaos this way.

But that chaos-informed project will include soul.

And I find I am far more likely to finish projects my soul resides in.

Conclusion

We don’t have to wade through empty champagne bottles to get to our easel as Bacon did.

But if our fairly organized desk or studio does get a bit hairy this year, can we remember Bacon’s passion and success and maybe lean into our creative wild a bit more?

Can you and I love our artist and writer selves more, deepen our dives into the unknown within and have more fun – before we clean up?

Can we overrule what the nuns or whoever told us about needing to be neat?

Because as Bacon’s life tells us, the job of the artist is not to be neat:

“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”- Francis Bacon

What do you think?

Question for you for the road;

1. What would it be like to grant your ideal, eclectic, often chaotic art-making process – the respect Bacon granted to his?

2. Do you allow paint on your studio floor yet?

Let me know in the comments.

I still don’t! I’m working up to it. But my tiny painting sink is paint-splooged.

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