Francis Bacon in conversation with Michel Archimbaud.

When I begin, I might have some ideas, but most of the time the only idea I have is of doing something. There’s nothing well-ordered in my head; I respond to some kind of stimulation, to a mark, that’s all.

[Clarifying the notion of instinct:] … in the first version of painting of 1946 […] I was doing a landscape and I wanted to make a field with a bird flying over it. I had put a whole heap of reference marks on the canvas, then suddenly the forms that you see on that canvas began to appear; they imposed themselves on me. It wasn’t what I set out to do. Far from it. It just happened like that, and I was quite surprised by what appeared. In that case, I think that instinct produced those forms. But that’s not the same as inspiration. That has nothing to do with the muses or anything like that; no it happened quite unexpectedly, like an accident.  I set out to do one thing, and then, in a completely astonishing way, something quite different happened. It’s both accidental and at the same time completely obvious. That, to me is instinct …

[Note too Bacon’s hostility to what he calls ‘metaphysics’ and his cautious welcoming of the notion of the unconscious. Above all, he declares himself an enemy of ‘mystery’ and ‘mysticism’.]

The artist’s studio isn’t the alchemist’s study where he searches for the philosopher’s stone – something which doesn’t exist in our world – it would perhaps be more like the chemist’s laboratory, which doesn’t stop you imagining that some unexpected phenomena might appear; quite the opposite, in fact.

Bacon notes, with respect to artistic ‘knowledge’ that it isn’t cumulative, as it is in science. What matters is style; great painters are not better than one another. The questioner reminds him of what Braque used to say, ‘Echo replies to echo, everything reverberates’. This meets with Bacon’s approval.

[I’ve always liked what Bacon says about the contagiousness of art and images:]

What the great writers have produced is a sort of stimulation in itself. Reading them can make me want to produce something myself; it’s a sort of excitement, perhaps even like sexual excitement, like something very strong anyway, a sort of very powerful urge, but with me that doesn’t take the form of attempting to illustrate texts in some way.

You are bombarded by images all the time. There are only a few, though, which stick in your mind and have some influence, but some do have a considerable effect. It’s difficult to say anything about this effect because it isn’t so much the image which matters, but what you do with it, and what effect some images have on other images. It’s possible, for example, that the fact of having seen the image of the Sphinx could change your way of seeing a man who passes you in the street. I think that every image, everything we see, changes our way of seeing everything else. My perception is completely altered. Certain images, perhaps even everything that I see, might imperceptibly modify all the rest. There’s a sort of influence of image upon image; it’s a great mystery, but I’m sure that’s what happens.

Certain works of Picasso have not only unlocked images for me, but also ways of thinking, and even ways of behaving. It doesn’t happen often, but I have experienced it. They released something in me, and made way for something else.

[Bacon notes he copied the works of the Old Masters when learning to paint.] It’s true that many painters have taught themselves in that way, but I didn’t. I’ve never felt the need. I’ve always believed that one cannot take on the genius of others, unfortunately. [Bacon goes on to disparage his own obsession with Pope Innocent X by Velazquez.]

[An interesting aside:] … I’ve never liked Surrealist painting. I’m not interested in Dali or Ernst. I think it’s the writers of this movement who were the best. All the texts, manifestos and reviews that they wrote, dreamed up and published and the great interest in reading and writing amongst Breton and his circle – that, in my opinion, constitutes the most interesting aspect of Surrealism.