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| Francis Bacon Study for the Human Body from a Drawing by Ingres 1982-84, 1984 |
“Zeno of Citium was shipwrecked near Athens and stumbled across a copy of Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates in a bookshop. He was so impressed that he asked the bookseller where he could meet a man like that and, by chance, Crates the Cynic was walking nearby and so Zeno was advised to become his follower.”
“Once when I was in London in my 30s, I was walking down Bond Street, and there was a crowd around an art show. I went in, and the paintings were so good. The prices were $10,000 to $20,000, which was a hell of a lot of money to me back then, and a man told me they were already sold, so I didn’t get one. The artist was Francis Bacon. I had no idea who he was at the time, but I knew he was extraordinary. Picasso still wins, though. Without Picasso, there wouldn’t have been a Bacon. I’m sure of that.”
“Strolling down London’s Bond Street one day in the 1960s, Francis Bacon saw one of his paintings in an art gallery window. The canvas had been discarded by him as below standard several years before. Asking the cost, he was told 50,000 pounds, then worth about $500,000. He wrote a check, carried the painting into the street, and kicked it to shreds.”