theGlamorousAnorak: Francis Bacon: Human Presence: National Portrait Gallery

Some people seem born to paint.

In the 20th century, painting was such a powerful crucible for psychological processing. What parts of the psyche can be expressed through imagery while the whole world is at war.

Bacon's trajectory in painting was to go deeper into his own language. He didn't really deviate and experiment with different styles once he had found his voice. He just developed and went further.

I remember seeing the screaming Pope paintings many years ago, and the impact they had. The imagery has been deeply influential in culture - think horror movies and album covers. They are still terrible and unsettling, but I've never quite seem then in the way described in the exhibition text. Rather than scaling back and revealing the trappings of powerful men, I feel full of pity for the figures, and how we are all caught in our own fragmentary, illusionary identity. Truly successful paintings manage to maintain ambiguous balance, always open to reinterpretation.

Frances Bacon, Head VI, 1949

Bacon was deeply knowledgeable about and influenced by art history. In the exhibition this relationship is clear, especially his obsessions with the Velasquez's Pope and Van Gogh.

I was reminded very much of the paintings of Walter Sickert, and the revealing of the inner person, the shadow self, distorted by the maelstrom of feelings and urges.

Frances Bacon, Self Portrait 1973 Walter Sickert, Self Portrait, 1896

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Fruit Basket, 16th century

There is also a feeling in Bacon's portraits of the Cortical Homunculus, a sensory representation of what it feels like, rather than looks like to be human. We don't normally see the distortions Bacon paints, but we feel them. He almost sees and paints ectoplasm.

Frances Bacon, Head of a Boy, 1960

The exhibition includes Francis Bacon on film and in photography. He stated that he hated his own face, but it is so expressive and revealing. Perhaps that is why.

J.S Lewinski, Francis Bacon, 1967

Once again the NPG have delivered a generous and meticulous exhibition. It's the nearest you'll get to walking through another person's psyche.

The portraits don't need the parallels I have shown, but that's how I saw it all, what I brought. These paintings will never lose their power, nor their place in art history.