July 2016
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Ab<br />
Aziz Art<br />
<strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
ba<br />
s<br />
Kia<br />
ros<br />
ta<br />
mi<br />
Iran<br />
Francis Bacon
1.Abbas Kiarostami<br />
12.Francis Bacon<br />
21.Turkmen Sahra<br />
Director: Aziz Anzabi<br />
Editor and translator :<br />
Asra Yaghoubi<br />
Research: Zohreh Nazari<br />
http://www.aziz-anzabi.com
Abas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami<br />
22 June 1940 – 4 <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong> was an<br />
Iranian film director, screenwriter,<br />
photographer and film producer.An<br />
active film-maker from 1970,<br />
Kiarostami had been involved in<br />
over forty films, including shorts<br />
and documentaries. Kiarostami<br />
attained critical acclaim for<br />
directing the Koker trilogy (1987–<br />
94), Close-Up (1990), Taste of<br />
Cherry (1997) – which was awarded<br />
the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film<br />
Festival that year – and The Wind<br />
Will Carry Us (1999). In his later<br />
works, Certified Copy (2010) and<br />
Like Someone in Love (2012), he<br />
filmed for the first time outside<br />
Iran: in Italy and Japan,<br />
respectively.<br />
Kiarostami had worked extensively<br />
as a screenwriter, film editor, art<br />
director and producer and had<br />
designed credit titles and publicity<br />
material. He was also a poet,<br />
photographer, painter, illustrator,<br />
and graphic designer. He was part<br />
of a generation of filmmakers in the<br />
Iranian New Wave, a Persian<br />
cinema movement that started in<br />
the late 1960s and includes<br />
pioneering directors such as<br />
Masoud Kimiai, Sohrab Shahid<br />
Saless, Dariush Mehrjui, Bahram<br />
Beyzai, Nasser Taghvai and Parviz<br />
Kimiavi. These filmmakers share<br />
many common techniques<br />
including the use of poetic dialogue<br />
and allegorical storytelling dealing<br />
with political and philosophical<br />
issues.<br />
Kiarostami had a reputation for<br />
using child protagonists, for<br />
documentary-style narrative films,<br />
for stories that take place in rural<br />
villages, and for conversations that<br />
unfold inside cars, using stationary<br />
mounted cameras. He is also<br />
known for his use of contemporary<br />
Iranian poetry in the dialogue,<br />
titles, and themes of his films.<br />
1
Early life and background<br />
Kiarostami majored in painting and<br />
graphic design at the University of<br />
Tehran College of Fine Arts.<br />
Kiarostami was born in Tehran. His<br />
first artistic experience was<br />
painting, which he continued into<br />
his late teens, winning a painting<br />
competition at the age of 18 shortly<br />
before he left home to study at the<br />
University of Tehran School of Fine<br />
Arts.He majored in painting and<br />
graphic design, and supported his<br />
studies by working as a traffic<br />
policeman.<br />
As a painter, designer, and<br />
illustrator, Kiarostami worked in<br />
advertising in the 1960s, designing<br />
posters and creating commercials.<br />
Between 1962 and 1966, he shot<br />
around 150 advertisements for<br />
Iranian television. In the late<br />
1960s, he began creating credit<br />
titles for films<br />
(including Gheysar by<br />
Masoud Kimiai) and illustrating<br />
children's books.<br />
Film career<br />
1970s<br />
In 1969, when the Iranian New<br />
Wave began with<br />
Dariush Mehrjui's film Gāv,<br />
Kiarostami helped set up a<br />
filmmaking department at the<br />
Institute for Intellectual<br />
Development of Children and<br />
Young Adults (Kanun) in Tehran. Its<br />
debut production and Kiarostami's<br />
first film was the twelve-minute<br />
The Bread and Alley (1970), a neorealistic<br />
short film about a<br />
schoolboy's confrontation with an<br />
aggressive dog. Breaktime followed<br />
in 1972. The department became<br />
one of Iran's most noted film<br />
studios, producing not only<br />
Kiarostami's films, but acclaimed<br />
Persian films such as The Runner<br />
and Bashu, the Little Stranger.<br />
In the 1970s, Kiarostami pursued an<br />
individualistic style of film making.<br />
When discussing his first film, he<br />
stated:<br />
Bread and Alley was my first<br />
experience in cinema and I must<br />
say a very difficult one. I had to<br />
work with a very young child, a<br />
dog, and an unprofessional crew<br />
except for the cinematographer,<br />
who was nagging and complaining<br />
all the time. Well, the<br />
cinematographer, in a sense, was<br />
right because I did not follow the<br />
conventions of film making that he<br />
had become accustomed to.
Following The Experience (1973),<br />
Kiarostami released The Traveler<br />
(Mossafer) in 1974. The Traveler<br />
tells the story of Qassem Julayi, a<br />
troubled and troublesome boy<br />
from a small Iranian city. Intent on<br />
attending a football match in far-off<br />
Tehran, he scams his friends and<br />
neighbors to raise money, and<br />
journeys to the stadium in time for<br />
the game, only to meet with an<br />
ironic twist of fate. In addressing<br />
the boy's determination to reach<br />
his goal, alongside his indifference<br />
to the effects of his amoral actions,<br />
the film examined human<br />
behavior and the balance of right<br />
and wrong. It furthered<br />
Kiarostami's reputation for realism,<br />
diegetic simplicity, and stylistic<br />
complexity, as well as his<br />
fascination with physical and<br />
spiritual journeys.<br />
In 1975, Kiarostami directed two<br />
short films So Can I and Two<br />
Solutions for One Problem. In early<br />
1976, he released Colors, followed<br />
by the fifty-four-minute film A<br />
Wedding Suit, a story about three<br />
teenagers coming<br />
into conflict over a suit for a<br />
wedding.<br />
Kiarostami in 1977<br />
Kiarostami's first feature film was<br />
the 112-minute Report (1977). It<br />
revolved around the life of a tax<br />
collector accused of accepting<br />
bribes; suicide was among its<br />
themes. In 1979, he produced and<br />
directed First Case, Second Case.<br />
1980s<br />
In the early 1980s, Kiarostami<br />
directed several short films<br />
including Toothache (1980), Orderly<br />
or Disorderly (1981), and The<br />
Chorus (1982). In 1983, he directed<br />
Fellow Citizen. It was not until his<br />
release of Where Is the Friend's<br />
Home? that he began to gain<br />
recognition outside Iran.<br />
The film tells a simple account of a<br />
conscientious eight-year-old<br />
schoolboy's quest to return his<br />
friend's notebook in a neighboring<br />
village lest his friend be expelled<br />
from school. The traditional beliefs<br />
of Iranian rural people are<br />
portrayed. The film has been noted<br />
for its poetic use of the Iranian rural<br />
landscape and its realism, both<br />
important elements of Kiarostami's<br />
work. Kiarostami made the film<br />
from a child's point of view.
Where Is the Friend's Home?,<br />
And Life Goes On (1992) (also<br />
known as Life and Nothing More),<br />
and Through the Olive Trees<br />
(1994) are described by critics as<br />
the Koker trilogy, because all three<br />
films feature the village of Koker in<br />
northern Iran. The films also relate<br />
to the 1990 Manjil–Rudbar<br />
earthquake, in which 40,000<br />
people died. Kiarostami uses the<br />
themes of life, death, change, and<br />
continuity to connect the films.<br />
The trilogy was successful in<br />
France in the 1990s and other<br />
Western European countries such<br />
as the Netherlands, Sweden,<br />
Germany and Finland. But,<br />
Kiarostami did not consider the<br />
three films to comprise a trilogy.<br />
He suggested that the last two<br />
titles plus Taste of Cherry (1997)<br />
comprise a trilogy, given their<br />
common theme of the<br />
preciousness of life. In 1987,<br />
Kiarostami was involved in the<br />
screenwriting of The Key, which he<br />
edited but did not direct. In 1989,<br />
he released Homework.<br />
1990s<br />
Kiarostami directing a film<br />
Kiarostami's first film of the<br />
decade was Close-Up (1990), which<br />
narrates the story of the real-life<br />
trial of a man who impersonated<br />
film-maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf,<br />
conning a family into believing they<br />
would star in his new film. The<br />
family suspects theft as the motive<br />
for this charade, but the<br />
impersonator, Hossein Sabzian,<br />
argues that his motives were more<br />
complex. The part-documentary,<br />
part-staged film examines Sabzian's<br />
moral justification for usurping<br />
Makhmalbaf's identity, questioning<br />
his ability to sense his cultural and<br />
artistic flair. Ranked 42 in British<br />
Film Institute's The Top 50 Greatest<br />
Films of All Time, Close-Up received<br />
praise from directors such as<br />
Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese,<br />
Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard,<br />
and Nanni Moretti and was<br />
released across Europe.<br />
In 1992, Kiarostami directed Life,<br />
and Nothing More..., regarded by<br />
critics as the second film of the<br />
Koker trilogy. The film follows a<br />
father and his young son as they<br />
drive from Tehran to Koker in<br />
search of two young boys who they<br />
fear might have perished in the<br />
1990 earthquake.
As the father and son travel<br />
through the devastated landscape,<br />
they meet earthquake survivors<br />
forced to carry on with their lives<br />
amid disaster.That year Kiarostami<br />
won a Prix Roberto Rossellini, the<br />
first professional film award of his<br />
career, for his direction of the film.<br />
The last film of the so-called Koker<br />
trilogy was Through the Olive Trees<br />
(1994), which expands a peripheral<br />
scene from Life and Nothing More<br />
into the central drama.Critics such<br />
as Adrian Martin have called the<br />
style of filmmaking in the Koker<br />
trilogy as "diagrammatical",<br />
linking the zig-zagging patterns in<br />
the landscape and the geometry<br />
of forces of life and the world.A<br />
flashback of the zigzag path in Life<br />
and Nothing More... (1992) in turn<br />
triggers the spectator's memory of<br />
the previous film, Where Is the<br />
Friend's Home? from 1987, shot<br />
before the earthquake. This<br />
symbolically links to the postearthquake<br />
reconstruction in<br />
Through the Olive Trees in 1994. In<br />
1995, Miramax Films released<br />
Through the Olive Trees in the US<br />
theaters.<br />
Kiarostami next wrote the<br />
screenplays for The Journey and<br />
The White Balloon (1995), for his<br />
former assistant Jafar<br />
Panahi.Between 1995 and 1996, he<br />
was involved in the production of<br />
Lumière and Company, a<br />
collaboration with 40 other film<br />
directors.<br />
Kiarostami won the Palme d'Or<br />
(Golden Palm) award at the Cannes<br />
Film Festival for Taste of Cherry.It is<br />
the drama of a man, Mr. Badii,<br />
determined to commit suicide. The<br />
film involved themes such as<br />
morality, the legitimacy of the act<br />
of suicide, and the meaning of<br />
compassion.<br />
Kiarostami directed The Wind Will<br />
Carry Us in 1999, which won the<br />
Grand Jury Prize (Silver Lion) at the<br />
Venice International Film Festival.<br />
The film contrasted rural and urban<br />
views on the dignity of labor,<br />
addressing themes of gender<br />
equality and the benefits of<br />
progress, by means of a stranger's<br />
sojourn in a remote Kurdish<br />
village.An unusual feature of the<br />
movie is that many of the<br />
characters are heard but not seen;<br />
at least thirteen to fourteen<br />
speaking characters in the film are<br />
never seen.
2000s<br />
In 2000, at the San Francisco Film<br />
Festival award ceremony,<br />
Kiarostami was awarded the Akira<br />
Kurosawa Prize for lifetime<br />
achievement in directing, but<br />
surprised everyone by giving it<br />
away to veteran Iranian actor<br />
Behrooz Vossoughi for his<br />
contribution to Iranian cinema.<br />
In 2001, Kiarostami and his<br />
assistant, Seifollah Samadian,<br />
traveled to Kampala, Uganda<br />
at the request of the United<br />
Nations International Fund for<br />
Agricultural Development,<br />
to film a documentary about<br />
programs assisting Ugandan<br />
orphans. He stayed for ten days<br />
and made ABC Africa.<br />
The trip was originally intended<br />
as a research in preparation<br />
for the filming, but Kiarostami<br />
ended up editing the entire film<br />
from the video footage shot there.<br />
The high number of orphans in<br />
Uganda has resulted from the<br />
deaths of parents in the AIDS<br />
epidemic.<br />
Time Out editor and National Film<br />
Theatre chief programmer, Geoff<br />
Andrew, said in referring to the<br />
film: "Like his previous four<br />
features, this film is not about<br />
death but life-and-death: how<br />
they're linked, and what attitude<br />
we might adopt with regard to their<br />
symbiotic inevitability."<br />
The following year, Kiarostami<br />
directed Ten, revealing an unusual<br />
method of filmmaking and<br />
abandoning many scriptwriting<br />
conventions. Kiarostami focused on<br />
the socio-political landscape of<br />
Iran. The images are seen through<br />
the eyes of one woman as she<br />
drives through the streets of Tehran<br />
over a period of several days. Her<br />
journey is composed of ten<br />
conversations with various<br />
passengers, which include her<br />
sister, a hitchhiking prostitute, and<br />
a jilted bride and her demanding<br />
young son. This style of filmmaking<br />
was praised by a number of critics.<br />
A. O. Scott in The New York Times<br />
wrote that Kiarostami, "in addition<br />
to being perhaps the most<br />
internationally admired Iranian<br />
filmmaker of the past decade, is<br />
also among the world masters of<br />
automotive cinema...He<br />
understands the automobile as a<br />
place of reflection, observation<br />
and, above all, talk."
In 2003, Kiarostami directed Five,<br />
a poetic feature with no dialogue<br />
or characterization. It consists of<br />
five long shots of nature which are<br />
single-take sequences, shot with a<br />
hand-held DV camera, along the<br />
shores of the Caspian Sea.<br />
Although the film lacks a clear<br />
storyline, Geoff Andrew<br />
argues that the film is "more than<br />
just pretty pictures". He adds,<br />
"Assembled in order,<br />
they comprise a kind of abstract or<br />
emotional narrative arc, which<br />
moves evocatively from separation<br />
and solitude to community, from<br />
motion to rest, near-silence to<br />
sound and song, light to darkness<br />
and back to light again,<br />
ending on a note of rebirth and<br />
regeneration."He notes the degree<br />
of artifice concealed behind the<br />
apparent simplicity of the imagery.<br />
Kiarostami produced 10 on Ten<br />
(2004), a journal documentary that<br />
shares ten lessons on moviemaking<br />
while he drives<br />
through the locations of his past<br />
films. The movie is shot on digital<br />
video with a stationary camera<br />
mounted inside the car, in a<br />
manner reminiscent of Taste of<br />
Cherry and Ten. In 2005 and 2006,<br />
he directed The Roads of<br />
Kiarostami, a 32-minute<br />
documentary that reflects on the<br />
power of landscape, combining<br />
austere black-and-white<br />
photographs with poetic<br />
observations,engaging music with<br />
political subject matter. Also in<br />
2005, Kiarostami contributed the<br />
central section to Tickets, a<br />
portmanteau film set on a train<br />
traveling through Italy. The other<br />
segments were directed by Ken<br />
Loach and Ermanno Olmi.<br />
In 2008, Kiarostami directed the<br />
feature Shirin, which features closeups<br />
of many notable Iranian<br />
actresses and the French actress<br />
Juliette Binoche as they watch a<br />
film based on a partly mythological<br />
Persian romance tale of Khosrow<br />
and Shirin, with themes of female<br />
self-sacrifice. The film has been<br />
described as "a compelling<br />
exploration of the relationship<br />
between image, sound and female<br />
spectatorship."<br />
That summer, he directed Wolfgang<br />
Amadeus Mozart's opera Così fan<br />
tutte conducted by Christophe<br />
Rousset at Festival d'Aix-en-<br />
Provence starring with William<br />
Shimell .
But the following year's<br />
performances at the English<br />
National Opera was impossible to<br />
direct because of refusal of<br />
permission to travel abroad from<br />
his country.<br />
2010s<br />
Kiarostami in 2015<br />
Certified Copy (2010), again<br />
starring Juliette Binoche, was made<br />
in Tuscany and was Kiarostami's<br />
first film to be shot and produced<br />
outside Iran.The story of an deconstructed portrait of a<br />
encounter between a British man marriage, acted with wellintentioned<br />
fervour by Juliette<br />
and a French woman, it was<br />
entered in competition for the Binoche, but persistently baffling,<br />
Palme d'Or in the 2010 Cannes Film contrived, and often simply bizarre<br />
Festival. Peter Bradshaw of The – a highbrow misfire of the most<br />
Guardian describes the film as an peculiar sort." He concluded that<br />
"intriguing oddity", and said, the film is "unmistakably an<br />
"Certified Copy is the<br />
example of Kiarostami's<br />
compositional technique, though<br />
not a successful example." Roger<br />
Ebert, however, praised the film,<br />
noting that "Kiarostami is rather<br />
brilliant in the way he creates<br />
offscreen spaces." Binoche won the<br />
Best Actress Award at Cannes for<br />
her performance in the film.<br />
Kiarostami's final film, Like<br />
Someone in Love, set and shot in<br />
Japan, received mostly positive<br />
reviews by critics.
Film festival work<br />
Kiarostami was a jury member at numerous film festivals, most notably<br />
the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, 2002 and 2005. He was also the<br />
president of the Caméra d'Or Jury in Cannes Film Festival 2005. He was<br />
announced as the president of the Cinéfondation and short film<br />
sections of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.<br />
Other representatives include the Venice Film Festival in 1985, the<br />
Locarno International Film Festival in 1990, the San Sebastian<br />
International Film Festival in 1996, the São Paulo International Film<br />
Festival in 2004, the Capalbio Cinema Festival in 2007 (in which he was<br />
president of the jury), and the Küstendorf Film and Music Festival in<br />
2011.He also made regular appearances at many other film festivals<br />
across Europe, including the Estoril Film Festival in Portugal.
Francis Bacon<br />
(28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992)<br />
was an Irish-born British figurative<br />
painter known for his bold,<br />
grotesque, emotionally charged<br />
and raw imagery. His painterly<br />
abstracted figures are typically<br />
isolated in glass or steel<br />
geometrical cages, set against flat,<br />
nondescript backgrounds. Bacon<br />
took up painting in his early 20s<br />
but worked sporadically and<br />
uncertainly until his mid-30s. He<br />
drifted as a highly complex bon<br />
vivant, homosexual, gambler and<br />
interior decorator and designer of<br />
furniture, rugs and bathroom tiles.<br />
He later admitted that his artistic<br />
career was delayed because he<br />
spent too long looking for subject<br />
matter that could sustain his<br />
interest.<br />
His breakthrough came with the<br />
1944 triptych Three Studies for<br />
Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion,<br />
which in the immediate aftermath<br />
of the Second World War, sealed<br />
his reputation as a uniquely bleak<br />
chronicler of the human condition.<br />
Remarking on the cultural<br />
significance of Three Studies, the<br />
art critic John Russell observed<br />
that "there was painting in England<br />
before the Three Studies, and<br />
painting after them, and no<br />
one...can confuse the two."<br />
Bacon said that he saw images "in<br />
series", and his artistic output<br />
typically focused on a single subject<br />
or format for sustained periods,<br />
often in triptych or diptych formats.<br />
His output can be crudely described<br />
as sequences or variations on a<br />
single motif; beginning with the<br />
1930s Picasso-informed Furies,<br />
moving on to the 1940s male heads<br />
isolated in rooms or geometric<br />
structures, the 1950s screaming<br />
popes, and the mid-to-late 1950s<br />
animals and lone figures. These<br />
were followed by his early 1960s<br />
variations on crucifixion scenes.<br />
From the mid-1960s he mainly<br />
produced portraits of friends and<br />
drinking companions, either as<br />
single or triptych panels. Following<br />
the 1971 suicide of his lover George<br />
Dyer, his art became more sombre,<br />
inward-looking and preoccupied<br />
with the passage of time and<br />
death.The climax of this later<br />
period is marked by masterpieces,<br />
including his 1982's "Study for Self-<br />
Portrait" and Study for a Self-<br />
Portrait—Triptych, 1985–86.<br />
12
Despite his bleak existentialist<br />
outlook, solidified in the public<br />
mind through his articulate and<br />
vivid series of interviews with<br />
David Sylvester, Bacon in person<br />
was highly engaging and<br />
charismatic, articulate, well-read<br />
and unapologetically gay. He was a<br />
prolific artist, but nonetheless<br />
spent many of the evenings of his<br />
middle age eating, drinking and<br />
gambling in London's Soho with<br />
like-minded friends such as Lucian<br />
Freud (though the two fell out in<br />
the 1950s, for reasons neither ever<br />
explained), John Deakin, Muriel<br />
Belcher, Henrietta Moraes, Daniel<br />
Farson and Jeffrey Bernard. After<br />
Dyer's suicide he largely distanced<br />
himself from this circle, and while<br />
his social life was still active and<br />
his passion for gambling and<br />
drinking continued, he settled into<br />
a platonic and somewhat fatherly<br />
relationship with his eventual heir,<br />
John Edwards.<br />
Bacon was equally reviled and<br />
acclaimed during his lifetime. Art<br />
critic Robert Hughes described him<br />
as "the most implacable, lyric artist<br />
in late 20th-century England,<br />
perhaps in all the world"and along<br />
with Willem de Kooning as "the<br />
most important painter of the<br />
disquieting human figure in the<br />
50's of the 20th century."Francis<br />
Bacon was the subject of two Tate<br />
retrospectives and a major showing<br />
in 1971 at the Grand Palais. Since<br />
his death his reputation and market<br />
value have grown steadily, and his<br />
work is amongst the most<br />
acclaimed, expensive and soughtafter.<br />
In the late 1990s a number of<br />
major works, previously assumed<br />
destroyed,including early 1950s<br />
popes and 1960s portraits,<br />
reemerged to set record prices at<br />
auction. On 12 November 2013 his<br />
Three Studies of Lucian Freud set<br />
the world record as the most<br />
expensive piece of art sold at<br />
auction, selling for<br />
$142,405,000,until exceeded by the<br />
sale of a Picasso in May 2015.
Early life<br />
Ianthe and Winifred, and a younger<br />
Bacon's birthplace at 63 Lower Baggot brother, Edward. He was raised by<br />
Street, Dublin<br />
the family nanny, Jessie Lightfoot,<br />
Francis Bacon was born in a nursing<br />
from Cornwall, known as 'Nanny<br />
home in the heart of old Georgian<br />
Lightfoot', and who remained close<br />
Dublin at 63 Lower Baggot Street<br />
to him until her death. Lightfoot<br />
,to parents of English descent. His<br />
was a mother figure for Bacon. In<br />
father, Captain Anthony Edward<br />
the 1940s, she aided him in keeping<br />
Mortimer ("Eddy") Bacon was born<br />
gambling houses in London.<br />
in Adelaide, South Australia to an<br />
The family changed houses often,<br />
English father and an Australian<br />
moving back and forth between<br />
mother.Eddy was a veteran of the<br />
Ireland and England several times,<br />
Boer War, and a racehorse trainer<br />
leading to a feeling of displacement<br />
and his mother, Christina Winifred<br />
remained with the artist<br />
"Winnie" Firth was heiress to a<br />
throughout his life. In 1911 the<br />
Sheffield steel business and coal<br />
family lived in Cannycourt House<br />
mine. It is believed his father was a<br />
near Kilcullen, County Kildare, but<br />
direct descendant of Sir Nicholas<br />
later moved to Westbourne Terrace<br />
Bacon, elder half-brother of Sir<br />
in London, close to where Bacon's<br />
Francis Bacon, the Elizabethan<br />
father worked at the Territorial<br />
statesman, philosopher and<br />
Force Records Office. They returned<br />
essayist. His great-greatgrandmother,<br />
Lady Charlotte<br />
to Ireland after World War I. Bacon<br />
lived with his maternal<br />
Harley, was intimately acquainted<br />
grandmother and step-grandfather,<br />
with Lord Byron, who called her<br />
Winifred and Kerry Supple, at<br />
"Ianthe", and dedicated his poem,<br />
Farmleigh, Abbeyleix, County Laois,<br />
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, to<br />
though the family again moved to<br />
her.When Bacon's paternal<br />
Straffan Lodge near Naas, County<br />
grandfather was given the chance<br />
Kildare; his mother's place of birth.<br />
to revive the title of Lord Oxford by<br />
Bacon as a child was shy, and<br />
Queen Victoria, he refused for<br />
enjoyed dressing up. This, coupled<br />
financial reasons.He had an older<br />
with his effeminate manner, upset<br />
brother, Harley,two younger sisters,<br />
his father.
A story emerged in 1992 of his in petty theft, he could survive. To<br />
father having had Francis supplement his income, he briefly<br />
horsewhipped by their groom. In tried his hand at domestic service,<br />
1924 his parents moved to but although he enjoyed cooking,<br />
Gloucestershire, first to Prescott he became bored and resigned. He<br />
House in Gotherington, then was sacked from a telephone<br />
Linton Hall near the border with answering position at a shop selling<br />
Herefordshire. At a fancy-dress women's clothes in Poland Street,<br />
party at the Firth family home, Soho, after writing a poison pen<br />
Cavendish Hall in Suffolk, Francis letter to the owner. Bacon found<br />
dressed as a flapper with an Eton himself drifting through London's<br />
crop, beaded dress, lipstick, high homosexual underworld, aware<br />
heels, and a long cigarette holder. that he was able to attract a certain<br />
In 1926, the family moved back to type of rich man, something he was<br />
Straffan Lodge. His sister, Ianthe, quick to take advantage of, having<br />
twelve years his junior, recalled developed a taste for good food<br />
that Bacon made drawings of and wine. One was a relative of<br />
ladies with cloche hats and long Winnie, another a breeder of<br />
cigarette holders. Later that year, racehorses, Harcourt-Smith, who<br />
Francis was thrown out of Straffan was renowned for his manliness.<br />
Lodge following an incident in Bacon claimed his father had asked<br />
which his father found him this "uncle" to take him 'in-hand'<br />
admiring himself in front of a large and 'make a man of him'. Francis<br />
mirror draped in his mother's had a difficult relationship with his<br />
underwear.<br />
father, once admitting to being<br />
London, Berlin and Paris<br />
sexually attracted to him.<br />
Bacon spent the latter half of 1926 In 1927 Bacon moved to Berlin,<br />
in London, living on an allowance where he saw Fritz Lang's<br />
of £3 a week from his mother's Metropolis and Sergei Eisenstein's<br />
trust fund, while reading Nietzsche. Battleship Potemkin, later catalysts<br />
Although destitute, Bacon found of his artistic imagination.<br />
that by avoiding rent and engaging
Bacon spent two months in Berlin,<br />
though Harcourt-Smith left after<br />
one – "He soon got tired of me, of<br />
course, and went off with a<br />
woman ... I didn't really know<br />
what to do, so I hung on for a<br />
while, and then,<br />
since I'd managed to keep a bit of<br />
money, I decided to go to Paris."<br />
Bacon then spent the next year<br />
and a half in Paris. He met<br />
Yvonne Bocquentin, pianist and<br />
connoisseur, at the opening of an<br />
exhibition. Aware of his own need<br />
to learn French, Bacon lived for<br />
three months with Madame<br />
Bocquentin and her family at their<br />
house near Chantilly. He travelled<br />
into Paris to visit the city's art<br />
galleries.At the Château de<br />
Chantilly (Musée Condé) he saw<br />
Nicolas Poussin's Massacre of the<br />
Innocents, a painting which he<br />
often referred to in his own later<br />
work. From Chantilly, he went to<br />
an exhibition that inspired him to<br />
take up painting.<br />
Return to London<br />
Bacon returned to London late in<br />
1928 or early 1929, and took up<br />
work as an interior designer. He<br />
found a studio at 17 Queensberry<br />
Mews West, South Kensington, and<br />
shared the upper floor with Eric<br />
Alden – who became his first<br />
collector – and his childhood nanny,<br />
Jessie Lightfoot. Bacon advertised<br />
himself as a "gentleman's<br />
companion" in The Times, on the<br />
front page (then reserved for<br />
personal messages and<br />
insertions).Among the many<br />
answers carefully vetted by Nanny<br />
Lightfoot was one from an elderly<br />
cousin of Douglas Cooper, owner of<br />
one of the finest collections of<br />
modern art in England. The<br />
gentleman, having paid Bacon for<br />
his services, found him part-time<br />
work as a telephone operator in a<br />
London club and sought Cooper's<br />
help in promoting Bacon's<br />
developing skill as a designer of<br />
furniture and interiors. Cooper<br />
commissioned a desk from Bacon in<br />
battleship grey around this time.<br />
In 1929 while working at the<br />
telephone exchange at the Bath<br />
Club on Dover Street he met Eric<br />
Hall who became his patron and<br />
lover in an often torturous<br />
relationship.
Bacon's first show in the winter of<br />
1929, at Queensberry Mews, was<br />
of his carpet rugs and furniture. It<br />
may have included Painted screen<br />
(ca. 1929–1930) and Watercolour<br />
(1929) his earliest surviving<br />
painting, which seems to have<br />
evolved from his rug designs, in<br />
turn influenced by the paintings<br />
and tapestries of Jean Lurçat.<br />
Sydney Butler (daughter of<br />
Samuel Courtauld and wife of Rab<br />
Butler) commissioned a glass and<br />
steel table and a set of stools for<br />
the dining room of her Smith<br />
Square house. Bacon's<br />
Queensberry Mews studio was<br />
featured in the August 1930 issue<br />
of<br />
The Studio magazine, in a double<br />
page article entitled "The 1930<br />
Look in British Decoration". The<br />
piece showed work including a<br />
large round mirror, some rugs and<br />
tubular steel and glass furniture<br />
largely influenced by the<br />
International Style.<br />
Bacon left the Queensberry Mews<br />
West studio in 1931 and had no<br />
settled space for some years.<br />
Bacon probably shared a studio<br />
with Roy de Maistre, circa 1931/32,<br />
at Carlyle Studios (just off the Kings<br />
Road) in Chelsea. Portrait (1932)<br />
and Portrait (ca. 1931–1932) (the<br />
latter bought by Diana Watson)<br />
both show a round-faced youth<br />
with diseased skin (painted after<br />
Bacon saw Ibsen's Ghosts), and<br />
date from a brief stay in a studio on<br />
the Fulham Road. In 1932, Bacon<br />
was commissioned by Gladys<br />
MacDermot, an Irish woman who<br />
had lived in Australia, to redesign<br />
much of the decoration and<br />
furniture of her flat at 98<br />
Ridgmount Gardens in Bloomsbury.<br />
Bacon recalled that she was<br />
"always filling me up with food".<br />
Early success<br />
Three Studies for Figures at the<br />
Base of a Crucifixion, 1944. Oil and<br />
pastel on Sundeala board. Tate<br />
Britain, London<br />
By 1946 Bacon had confidently<br />
arrived; his "Three Studies"<br />
summarises themes explored in<br />
Bacon's previous paintings,<br />
including his examination of<br />
Picasso's biomorphs and his<br />
interpretations of the Crucifixion<br />
and the Greek Furies.
Bacon did not realise his original<br />
intention to paint a large crucifixion<br />
scene and place the figures at the<br />
foot of the cross. It is generally<br />
considered Bacon's first mature<br />
piece; he regarded his works before<br />
the triptych as irrelevant, and<br />
throughout his life tried to suppress<br />
their appearance on the art market.<br />
When the painting was first<br />
exhibited in 1945 it caused a<br />
sensation and helped to establish<br />
him as one of the foremost postwar<br />
painters. Remarking on the<br />
cultural significance of Three<br />
Studies, the critic John Russell<br />
observed in 1971 that "there was<br />
painting in England before the<br />
Three Studies, and painting after<br />
them, and no one ... can confuse<br />
the two."Painting (1946) was<br />
shown in several group shows<br />
including in the British section of<br />
Exposition internationale d'art<br />
moderne (18 November – 28<br />
December 1946) at the Musée<br />
National d'Art Moderne, for which<br />
Bacon travelled to Paris. Within a<br />
fortnight of the sale of Painting<br />
(1946) to the Hanover Gallery<br />
Bacon used the proceeds to<br />
decamp from London to Monte<br />
Carlo. After staying at a succession<br />
of hotels and flats, including the<br />
Hôtel de Ré, Bacon settled in a<br />
large villa, La Frontalière, in the hills<br />
above the town. Hall and Lightfoot<br />
would come to stay. Bacon spent<br />
much of the next few years in<br />
Monte Carlo apart from short visits<br />
to London. From Monte Carlo,<br />
Bacon wrote to Graham Sutherland<br />
and Erica Brausen. His letters to<br />
Brausen show he painted there, but<br />
no paintings are known to survive.<br />
In 1948, Painting (1946) sold to<br />
Alfred Barr for the Museum of<br />
Modern Art in New York for £240.<br />
Bacon wrote to Sutherland asking<br />
that he apply fixative to the patches<br />
of pastel on Painting (1946) before<br />
it was shipped to New York.<br />
Painting (1946) is now too fragile to<br />
be moved from MoMA for<br />
exhibition elsewhere. At least one<br />
visit to Paris in 1946 brought Bacon<br />
into more immediate contact with<br />
French postwar painting and Left<br />
Bank ideas such as<br />
Existentialism.He had, by this time,<br />
embarked on his lifelong friendship<br />
with Isabel Rawsthorne, a painter<br />
closely involved with Giacometti<br />
and the Left Bank set. They shared<br />
many interests including<br />
ethnography and classicalliterature.
Turkmen Sahra that means "Plain<br />
of Turkmens", is a region in the<br />
northeast of Iran near the Caspian<br />
Sea, bordering Turkmenistan, the<br />
majority of whose inhabitants are<br />
ethnic Turkmen. The most<br />
important cities of Turkmen Sahra<br />
are Gonbad, Aqqala, Kalaleh,<br />
Maraveh Tappeh, Gomishan and<br />
Bandar Torkaman. There were,<br />
according to Ethnologue, over 2<br />
million Turkmens in<br />
Turkmen Sahra in 1997.<br />
Society<br />
Turkmens today in Turkmensahra<br />
live fairly modern lifestyles,<br />
although the effects of religion<br />
and the Muslim way of life are<br />
visible. The economy is based on<br />
industry, even if agriculture still<br />
plays a great role in some<br />
Turkmens' life, like in other places<br />
of Iran. The professions among<br />
Turkmens shows the pattern of a<br />
modern economy even if there are<br />
still some shortcomings due to lack<br />
of funding from the central<br />
authorities. The economic<br />
potential of Turkmensahra is big<br />
since a vast amount of oil was<br />
discovered early in the 1930. But<br />
since there was a deal with the<br />
Soviet Union that there would be<br />
no oil extraction from Turkmen<br />
Sahra, there is not an oil industry at<br />
the moment.<br />
Before the revolution in 1979 the<br />
Turkmens lived an economically<br />
richer life than people in other<br />
areas of Iran. Though poverty<br />
existed in small portions, most<br />
people lived and could afford<br />
material goods in their home. This<br />
was unusual for some parts of Iran.<br />
During the Shah's time the<br />
difference between cities and<br />
villages was great. Going from a city<br />
like Bandar Torkaman to a nearby<br />
village, the differences were so vast<br />
that tourists felt like they had gone<br />
back in time. In villages there were<br />
no asphalt roads nor doctors. There<br />
was no electricity either to light up<br />
the town or the houses. People<br />
used donkeys and horses to travel<br />
until about 30 years ago. Buses,<br />
taxis and private cars were found<br />
only in bigger cities. The literacy<br />
rate has also increased since the<br />
revolution; it was not unusual for<br />
older Turkmen women to be<br />
analphabets. Girls began to study in<br />
school after the revolution which<br />
was unusual back in the Shah's<br />
period.. 21
All these differences shared<br />
between a city and village were<br />
common all over Iran during the<br />
Shah's period not excluded only to<br />
Turkmen Sahra<br />
Other cultural traits can<br />
be seen as in the weddings<br />
where Turkmens still practice<br />
several day weddings. An ancient<br />
tradition hailing back to the<br />
gökturks or<br />
even the hsiung-nu, Asian huns.<br />
Today's Turkmens have a bride<br />
fee – the bridegroom gives away<br />
a fee for taking the girl's hand.<br />
In tradition the girl's family<br />
provides even greater economic<br />
starting capital to the newlyweds'<br />
life. For example the bridegroom<br />
buys<br />
gold for the bride to wear;<br />
in return the bride's family buys<br />
daily life equipment for the new<br />
household.<br />
The wedding itself, in times before<br />
the revolution, lasted several days<br />
where often all the relatives, clan<br />
members, and in some cases the<br />
whole village would turn up to<br />
celebrate. Common activities were<br />
to have races where the winner<br />
would receive a prize, contests in<br />
göresh traditional Turkmen<br />
wrestling, horse races and more.<br />
Today those traditions have<br />
perished instead there are a<br />
modern segment like private<br />
weddings hold in western<br />
countries. Even though the modern<br />
element has been introduced some<br />
people still have several day long<br />
weddings. Instead of races they<br />
now today have a private party for<br />
the bride and relatives, the<br />
bridegroom and one big<br />
celebration where relatives and<br />
friends are invited – not the whole<br />
village as during the shah's period.<br />
Turkmens today seem to lose their<br />
traditions due to westernization<br />
and persianification of the society<br />
not excluded to Turkmens but the<br />
whole of Iran. People tend to watch<br />
a lot of satellite which has a great<br />
range of variety all from political to<br />
cultural and genuine<br />
entertainment.<br />
Women are getting educated in a<br />
higher rate, even among traditional<br />
households. Among the generation<br />
after the revolution there are not<br />
any who are analphabetes or<br />
illiterate.
History<br />
Turkmens came first to the region<br />
at the time of their forefathers, the<br />
Seljuk Turks, thought early nomads<br />
empires has existed since the early<br />
age of Massagets or even earlier.<br />
According to the Avesta Afrasiyab<br />
the legendary king of Turan hailed<br />
from Turkmen Sahra.<br />
Before the era of Reza Khan, later<br />
Reza Shah, there was a landmass<br />
from Khiva in north to Bandar gaz<br />
in south were Turkmens inhabited<br />
the area was called Turkmenistan.<br />
Due to the Great Game and<br />
famous resistance of Turkmens to<br />
great powers as czar Russia and<br />
England Turkmens lost their<br />
independence and their country<br />
was split in two lands. After the<br />
Gökdepe battle over one million<br />
Turkmens fled through Iran over to<br />
Afghanistan were their descents<br />
still live today. The first time in<br />
history Turkmens had shown<br />
resistance to central authority of<br />
Iran was in early 1920 when Reza<br />
Khan unified Iran he meet<br />
resistance of a Turkmen group and<br />
a leader called Anna-Geldi Ach, the<br />
later used to deploy sneak attacks<br />
from Turkmen Sahra and use hit<br />
and run tactis and hide into<br />
modern Turkmenistan before SSR<br />
Turkmen was formed. During that<br />
time a gurultai like the ones<br />
Gökturks held was hold to elect a<br />
mullah as their leader, called<br />
Osman Akhun. It is the first<br />
democratically modern Turkmen<br />
assemblement ever hold. Turkmens<br />
are considered by outsiders who<br />
visited their area to be generous,<br />
kind-hearted thought even having<br />
the trait of being hot-headed.<br />
Ahmad Shamlou, a famous Persian<br />
writer, wrote a novel about a<br />
Turkmen character, Amin. He also<br />
indicated the generosity and kindhearted<br />
spirit of the Turkmens in<br />
his poem about Amin.<br />
Famous Turkmens from within<br />
Turkmen Sahra include the spiritual<br />
leader, national poet and unifier of<br />
Turkmen society Magtymguly<br />
Pyragy, who was born in a village<br />
outside Gonbad. The central Iranian<br />
authorities erected a mausoleum<br />
over his grave. Other persons born<br />
are Agha Mohammed Khan,<br />
founder of the Qajar dynasty of<br />
Iran. Also there are claims of Nadir<br />
Shah being Turkmen, but that's<br />
doubtful according to his own<br />
campaigns and official biography.
The Nadir Shah's first enemies were the Turkmens of Turkmen Sahra.<br />
Well-known visitors of the region include Ármin Vámbéry, who wrote a<br />
book about his passage among Turkmens in Turkmen Sahra.
p://www.aziz-anzabi.com