MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Bringing home the Bacon
RINA ARYA confronts the brutal operation of Francis Bacon’s approach to portraiture
(L) Three Studies of Isabel Rawsthorne 1967; (R) Self-Portrait 1973 by Francis Bacon
[Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin; Private Collection] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
IN our age of digitally retouched selfies, Francis Bacon’s portraits come as a monumental shock. The faces in his paintings, which dissolve at every turn, are chilling, as a major show at the National Portrait Gallery demonstrates.
Visitors to Francis Bacon: Human Presence are greeted by his studies of papal figures and men in suits. In these works, Bacon encased his figures in the suggestions of boxes, which are known as “space-frames.” He also deployed a painting technique known as “shuttering” in which he added a series of vertical lines to the portrait.
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BLANE SAVAGE recommends the display of nine previously unseen works by the Glaswegian artist, novelist and playwright
Reading Picasso’s Guernica like a comic strip offers a new way to understand the story it is telling, posits HARRIET EARLE
DARIUS VON GUTTNER SPORZYNSKI welcomes the biography of an 18th-century social reformer whose name sits atop Australia’s highest mountain
JOE JACKSON explores how growing up black amid ‘the quiet racism of Scotland’ shaped the art and politics of Maud Sulter