John deakin photographs of freud and bacon
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The John Deakin photograph “Wheeler’s Lunch” psychiatry not explosion it seems.
Taken in his favourite seafood restaurant, Francis Bacon appears the primary focus, Christ-like in interpretation centre, decorate a make public plate aureola. The forward-facing arrangement alludes to tight other title: “Last Supper”, a recognize to say publicly irreligious Monk, but framed by a lapsed grand, Deakin.
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BACON OWNED LUCIAN FREUD PHOTOGRAPH INSPIRES NEW JASPER JOHNS EXHIBITION
MoMA New York is currently hosting a new exhibition entitled: 'Jasper Johns: Regrets', which displays works by the American artist inspired by a photograph once owned by Francis Bacon. In June 2012, artist Jasper Johns was viewing a Christies London sales catalogue of work by Francis Bacon when he came across photographs of the painter Lucian Freud. They were taken by photographer John Deakin in 1964 at the request of Bacon, the artist famously preferring photographic reference over live models for his paintings. One particular photograph of Lucian Freud caught Jasper Johns’ eye. Freud is sitting on a quilt-covered brass bed in the corner of a room. He has one leg folded under the other, his head bowed, his face obscured by a raised hand. His stooped-shouldered, folded-in pose suggests exhaustion and despair. The despair is further reinforced by the condition of the photograph, creased and torn, with its left edge secured with a paper clip. The photo was found in Bacon's cluttered studio after his death in 1992. From this photograph, not just its image of Freud but the physical distressed condition of the photographic print itself, that Johns has based a group of nearly two do
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Under the Influence: John Deakin, Photography & the Lure of Soho
With dozens of his most compelling images, letters and contact sheets, it is an evocative record of life in and around the four parallels of Wardour, Dean, Frith and Greek streets in the 1950s and 1960s, the backdrop for a creative and maverick photographer ‘whose pictures take you by the scruff of the neck and insist that you see’.
Loved and loathed in equal measure, Deakin was a legendary member of the quarter’s bohemian crowd of artists and misfits, enjoying a certain louche glamour as an ex-Vogue photographer. His circle included the painters Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, the writers Dylan Thomas and Jeffrey Bernard, and the socialite Henrietta Moraes and Muriel Belcher, proprietor of fabled drinking den the Colony Room.
Deakin photographed these and other celebrated personalities alongside lesser-known Soho figures of the day. Artisans and tradesmen, from the ice-seller to the under-chef, newspaper vendor, street sweeper, vagrants and outsiders – all were captured by his democratic, equitable lens. You can find out more at www.artbookspublishing.co.uk.