Francis Bacon and Nazi propaganda / Martin Hammer by Hammer, Martin - 2012

London: Tate Publishing, 2012. 1st edition. Fine cloth copy in an equally fine dust-wrapper. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Physical description; 224 pages: illustrations, some colour; 25 cm. Includes bibliographical references (pages 214-222) and index. Contents; I. Contexts -- Painting modern history (after photography) -- A psychopathic god -- II. The Second World War and its aftermath -- Emergence -- In time of war -- Avenging furies -- Paradise lost -- Flowers of evil -- The slaughterhouse of history -- Clearning away the screens -- III. Seeing the story of one's own time -- As the snail leaves its slime -- Papal fallibility -- Nuremberg variations -- After Eichmann. Summary; Born in 1909, Francis Bacon's entire early adulthood was penetrated by the tragedy of the Second World War. Unlike many of his contemporaries in Britain, he did not participate in the war or become a war artist. Rather, he is unique amongst his generation of artists as independently choosing Hitler, Nazi Germany and Fascist propaganda to be one of the most influential sources for his practice. In this new scholarly study, Martin Hammer addresses the question of how and why Bacon appropriated the photographs and documentation of Fascist imagery to his own expressive ends, emphasising how it was used technically in his painting as a visual aid, and how, far from being an artist of private spaces and personal anguish, he in fact found inspiration from mass circulated media and the use of it for the promotion of global ideals. Featuring an extensive selection of colour and black-and-white reproductions of both paintings and source material from Bacon's own collected archive, Hammer uses focussed visual engagement with Bacon's work, illuminating the artist's aims to comment and reflect on the wider contemporary world. Subjects; Bacon, Francis 1909-1992 - Criticism and interpretation. Hitler, Adolf 1889-1945. Nazi propaganda. World War, 1939-1945 - Art and the war. History in art. Painting, British - 20th century. Art and Design. War in art. World War, 1939-1945. National Socialism. Painting & paintings; Individual artists. ART / Individual Artists / General. ART / Criticism & Theory.