Francis Bacon (1909-92) speaks openly to his close friend Michel Archimbaud, whose searching questions shed a new light on Bacon’s work. The discussion is wide-ranging, touching on painting, literature and music, with candid revelations about Bacon’s childhood, his relationship with his father, his friends and the influences that have shaped his art.

The conversation is punctuated with revealing and sometimes disparaging remarks about a whole host of artists, including, among others, Rubens, Blake, Monet, Cezanne, Picasso, Balthus, Giacometti, Shakespeare and Baudelaire. A most alluring volume on account of its combination of incisive interviews with the painter and extensive images of his studio, Francis Bacon exposes the man behind the myth in a subtle and sensitive manner. The text is both perfectly accessible and intellectually scintillating for anyone, no matter how familiar with the artist and his work.

These interviews can be regarded as Bacon’s final vision, as they took place in the artist’s studio in Paris between October 1991 and April 1992, shortly before he died. This edition is unique not only in the rarity of the material that it reveals but, moreover, in the distinctly down-to-earth and human outlook it adopts. This book embodies an unparalleled achievement as it succeeds in penetrating beyond the elusive, enigmatic and eccentric persona of artist.