‘I was at one of [Francis Bacon’s] openings at the Marlborough Gallery in London where he was standing in some kind of reception line and I simply said, ‘Hi – Peter Beard’. He said, ‘I know who you are.’ It was my very great luck that he had just bought The End of the Game and connected with the doomed pachyderms.
He didn’t waste any time inviting me to his studio, 7 Reece Mews. There were a lot of my wildlife photos spread out on the floor, all splattered with his paint drippings. The place was like a compost heap. He had all these catalogue pages of his work pasted on the wall – he said that when the sun hit them, it made his old paintings seem new to him.’
He didn’t waste any time inviting me to his studio, 7 Reece Mews. There were a lot of my wildlife photos spread out on the floor, all splattered with his paint drippings. The place was like a compost heap. He had all these catalogue pages of his work pasted on the wall – he said that when the sun hit them, it made his old paintings seem new to him.’
– Peter Beard (Steven M.L. Aronson interview with Peter Beard for the book Peter Beard, Köln: Taschen, 2020)
Francis Bacon and Peter Beard, 1970s
