Squalor is the word that comes immediately to mind at the sight of Francis Bacon's studio, painfully reconstructed at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. The photographs do not convey the feeling of the place: a suffocating atmosphere of confinement — the studio was located in a small attic — the accumulated layers of dirt and débris, the single forlorn electric lamp hanging limply from a cord, a recurrent motif in Bacon's paintings, the familiar books of Velazquez eviscerated on the floor convey an impression of unbearable loneliness, anguish and despair. It is truly the alchemist's cove, where dross is turned into gold.
