Parul Sehgal at the NYT:
“A deep-end girl,” he called himself, not one “minnying along the sidewalk of life.”
In their new book, “Francis Bacon: Revelations,” Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for their 2004 biography of Willem de Kooning, argue that Bacon discouraged investigations into his life because he still harbored “one big secret.”
I sat up in my chair, too. What remains to be known? “Bacon was exhibitionistically frank about the traumatic adolescent events that would define his role as an artist as well as a lover,” according to Richardson. There exists a shelf of excellent, gossipy accounts of his life, many by his friends, full of Bacon’s stories about his childhood, its isolation and grim thrills.
more here.