Boston Globe: A definitive life of Bacon
“A definitive life of Bacon…. Painting by painting, exhibition by exhibition [this is an account] of how Bacon’s wild innovations in figurative art countered the mid-20th-century fashions for both abstract expressionism and pop art. Swan and Stevens have great fun, too, as they chronicle Bacon’s wit, charm, extravagance, and cruelty, including some shocking abuses of friends, family, and art-world colleagues…Stevens and Swan are vivid scene setters. They’re also shrewd evaluators of the people in Bacon’s life…Francis Bacon does justice to the contradictions of both the man and the art.”
Michael Upchurch, “A new biography gives us Francis Bacon in full,” Boston Globe, March 18, 2021.