Lot 101: Alastair Thain (British, b.1961) FRANCIS BACON,

Alastair Thain (British, b.1961) FRANCIS BACON, 1987 c-type print; unique (printed 2005) 100 by 84cm., 39.5 by 33in. Alastair Thain, 'Skin Deep: The Portraits of Alastair Thain', Viking Adult, 1992 (reproduced)This rare and candid portrait of Francis Bacon was shot by renowned photographer Alastair Thain. Thain, who was born in Germany in 1961 studied photography at the London College of Printing in the early 1980s, and by the age of twenty-four had achieved such recognition as to have work hanging in the National Portrait Gallery; the gallery is now home to twenty of his portraits, Vivienne Westwood and Sir Anthony Hopkins among them. Thain's skill lies in his ability to capture familiar faces and present them in an unfamiliar way. His portrait of the purportedly shy Francis Bacon is testament to this gift. Shot in Colony Rooms London in 1987 this work is not only a dramatic and sizeable example from Thain's oeuvre it is also an exclusive one-off print created in 2005 as a unique work commissioned by the Kunsthalle , Mannheim for their exhibition of portraits by Thain shown at the Kunsthalle from 4 June to 13 November 2005.Thain's gift in the genre of portraiture pivots around his extraordinary ability to communicate and empathise with his subject. The result of this discourse moves his photographs out of the realm of documentation and formulaic depictions of familiar individuals towards something deeper and more universal. His photographs reveal elements of the portrayed that are typically veiled behind a façade. When this photograph was executed in 1987 Bacon was in his late seventies and his status in the arts was cemented through numerous solo and retrospective exhibitions worldwide. Two years previous to this portrait the Tate Gallery, London played host to a major retrospective of Bacon's oeuvre comprising one hundred and twenty-five works. During this period Bacon's style mirrored his persona and became knowingly enigmatic. His pictorial language was paired back to its essentials such that the human body, as depicted in Study of the Human Body, 1982 was savagely reduced to a stump and a pair of legs or inferred by its remains in Blood on the Floor-Painting, 1986. Thain spent ten years photographing actors and artists for magazines in Britain and America including such publications as the New York Times, Face and Interview. This portrait falls into this body of work in which Thain carved out his own unique groove in the genre. His style is marked out by his larger than life rendering of his subjects coupled with his technical innovations in the medium. Thain spent fifteen years devising a unique camera technique which employs the same large format ultra-high definition camera employed by NASA to photograph the Earth from Space. The result; a hyperrealist representation offering unparalleled intimacy and insight into his subject, in this case Francis Bacon. The viewer is almost forced into dialogue with the subject, overawed by the sudden closeness of the subject. This magnified depiction simultaneously highlights both the confidence and power of Bacon as artist and his fragility as man. Upon later reflection, Thain recalls his encounter with Francis Bacon fondly despite broadening his horizons beyond portraiture by the mid-1990s. His other subjects have included Jack Nicholson, Andy Warhol and John Malkovich to name but a few.