Francis Bacon and fetishism: queer tastes in a time of rationing, 1940-1954
Janes, Dominic (2026) Francis Bacon and fetishism: queer tastes in a time of rationing, 1940-1954. Visual culture in Britain. ISSN 1471-4787 (Print); 1941-8361 (Online)
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This article, building on previous work, explores the ways in which eroticism and material culture interacted in Bacon’s early paintings by situating Bacon’s work in the context of religious, commodity and sexual fetishism. It focuses flesh, seen as something that connects the raw commodity with the desiring body and Christian notions of sexual sin, to rethink the artist’s fascination with the depiction of meat. Fetishistic approaches to material objects, driven by anti-religious scepticism, help to explain the fleshy nature of Bacon’s art during a time of food rationing in Britain when prodigal appetites for men and meat were criminalized.
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