It’s like Francis Bacon week on The Amateur Art Collector!  A big retrospective of his opened at the Met yesterday, but to surprisingly little buzz in New York as far as I can tell.  There’s also a related lecture tomorrow at 6pm that’s free with museum admission.

Here’s the official website and blurb:

The first major exhibition in New York in twenty years devoted to one of the most compelling painters of the twentieth century, Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective features some 130 works–sixty-five paintings and as many archival items from public and private collections from around the world–that span the entirety of the artist’s full and celebrated career. Marking the centenary of the artist’s birth in Dublin in 1909, the exhibition brings together the most significant works from each period of Bacon’s career, focusing on the key subjects and themes that run through his extraordinary creative output. The presentation affords the most comprehensive examination to date of Bacon’s sources and working processes, offering a reevaluation of the artist’s work in light of a range of new interpretations and archival materials that have emerged since his death in 1992.

The trusty New York Times recaps the Hong Kong International Art Fair, which ended this past Sunday.  Check it out here.

The article specifies that two Francis Bacon portraits offered by Ben Brown Fine Arts were a big draw at the event.  I point this out because I finally saw Love is the Devil last night– the artsy 1998 Bacon biography that focuses on his troubled romantic relationship with George Dyer.  It’s a  fantastic story, but I give the movie a solid ‘ok’ to ‘ok+’.  Fun tidbit, though, the cast includes (a hardly recognizable) Tilda Swinton and (a naked) Daniel Craig before they became the huge stars they are today.