Theodore Dalrymple: Rejoin the EasyJet “community”? No thanks
AT THE END OF HIS LIFE BACON turned his attention away from the matador and towards the animal. The star exhibit in Bilbao was his recently discovered last painting, Study of a Bull (1991), which had not been publicly discussed, reproduced or seen until it was uncovered by Martin Harrison as he prepared a catalogue of the artist’s complete works.
Study of a Bull (below) reproduces the panoramic view from the cheapest tickets in a bullring on the highest tiers of the sunny side that loom above the gate through which the bull is released. Less iconic than the so-called moment of truth — the point of maximum risk for the matador, raising the sword for the final kill — there are only a handful of images of the bull at this initial stage in the photographic books from Bacon’s studio. Study of a Bull was seemingly inspired by Leiris’s death in 1990 as well as Lorca’s elegiac poem. Bacon positioning his subject between darkness and light lends itself to a symbolic interpretation as the bull finds itself in a liminal zone between life and death.
Bacon adorned the canvas of his final painting with dust from his own studio to imitate the sandy arena floor, and he clearly identified at some level with the bull as he faced mortality in solitude. Ignoring medical advice, in April 1992 he travelled to Madrid. After suffering a cardiac arrest, he was cared for by nuns. Sister Mercedes, who looked after Bacon, has become a minor celebrity in Spain, recalling on television the dying artist seeking solace by sketching pictures of bulls.
Study for Bullfight No. 1 was employed as a posthumous homage in promotional materials for the 1992 Nîmes bullfighting season. The response to his death was, however, largely muted. Bacon was quite specific that he wanted no funeral service. His ashes were returned to the UK and there is no gravestone to visit. The contrast with the death of an active matador could not be greater. Among the numerous gravestones for bullfighters in the Almudena cemetery, located within walking distance of Las Ventas, is one dedicated to José Cubero Sánchez, Yiyo, who died aged 21 in 1985, the last matador to be killed in a Madrid ring.
His corpse, dressed in his suit of lights, was laid in wake at his family home. The coffin was then given a lap of honour in Las Ventas before he was laid to rest. A young corpse can turn stars into myths. Like rock stars, bullfighters rarely age well; they become parodies of their former selves or struggle to adjust to everyday life. Bacon was not exempt from the ravages of age, but he remained prodigious to the end. His latter-day vitality owed much to Spain. Whether people like it or not, Las Ventas is as much part of Madrid’s rich cultural patrimony as the Prado.