Francis Bacon III

Stéphane Mandelbaum had a brief career, only working for ten years before he was murdered in 1986 at the age of 25. During this period, however, he made several hundred drawings, paintings, and sketches. Drawing, often with pencils or ballpoint pens, was at the center of his practice. He created portraits in an expressionist style, working from photographs as well as his own image. He frequently added words, names, or text, as well as images from pornographic magazines to these compositions, creating unexpected and disturbing juxtapositions. He depicted a range of people, to include family members (such as his grandfather), historical figures, friends and associates, artists (often those who had been murdered like Piere Paolo Pasolini or Pierre Goldman, and himself. His works are informed by trauma, which governed his engagement with history and biography. Many of Mandelbaum's family survived the Holocaust and Armenian genocide. He depicted survivors, such as his grandfather, as well as Nazis who committed atrocities, such as Röhm and Goebbels, in a desire to force the viewer to address "those responsible for genocide" as well as acknowledge those who stood up to it. To these images, he would frequently add text, written in French, Hebrew, Yiddish or a combination, often incorporating profanities. As Mandelbaum noted "On my pages the 20th century vomits out its murders." (Hoptman 46). In this way, his art can be read as wrestling with Adorno’s question about the possibility and nature of artistic production after the Holocaust.

This is one of the prints Mandelbaum made of Francis Bacon. Although Mandelbaum never met Bacon, he had a great influence on his work. Here, he captures him in a moment of reflection. Although he is still, he captures his intensity, with the sketch-like quality of the work conveying the impression of great activity and motion.