For many, gambling has a quality unlike anything else that keeps individuals on their toes for the next big win. Throughout the years, many have fallen under its spell. Some have often found it difficult to spot the razor thin line that separates the thrill of the gamble and this rollercoaster ride we call life. From kings to peasants, artisans and philosophers, gambling caters to people of all backgrounds. Gambling offers something exciting that quenches an intangible thirst. For gamblers of the art world, the feeling is mutual.
Artists are no strangers to its mysteries either. Creative minds have a knack for pushing boundaries and gambling offers just the type of seesaw between winning and losing that they often unconsciously desire. Take a great mind like Ernest Hemingway for instance, who sadly succumbed to his demons by taking his own life; he once famously called gambling a “demanding friend.” The 20th century saw many famous gamblers of the art world, and perhaps two of the most famous of all were painters. These two men knew all too well the role that gambling played for them. It was an important muse from which they drew strength, ecstasy and misery. Despite their habits, they formed lasting careers and bodies of work lauded to this day. Planet 7 Online casino wants to show you the lives of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon: gamblers of the art world.
Gambling artist Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud was born in 1922 in Berlin. The grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, Freud moved to London at an early age to flee Nazi Germany in the 1930s; eventually becoming a British citizen. His early work as a painter was influenced by surrealism, but by the 1950s he developed a style of his own. A notoriously private man, Freud would go on to produce portraits of close friends and family in thick, blobby oils that depicted individuals and interiors with a style of realism never before seen.
His works are noted for their psychological penetration and even discomforting appearance. Painting from life, much like his grandfather, Freud would expose his models to punishing sessions. Forcing them to endure hours of sittings while he would work and rework from life over a period of many months. Meticulously he would paint each wrinkle of flesh under incredible scrutiny and deliberately unflattering intensity.
Freud was a notoriously private man. Throughout his long career, he became a sort of Orwellian character ,bridging the history of the various cult eras. He rubbed shoulders with the likes of Greta Garbo, Sinatra and even the notorious Kray Twins, England’s most famous gangsters.
Despite his attempts at privacy, Freud would go on to enjoy a 60-year career until his death. Many recognize him as one of the most famous figurative artists of the 20th century. His painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, a life-size portrait of a job center worker, sold for a record $32 million in 2008. At the time, this was the highest amount ever paid at private auction for the work of a living artist. Only those closest to him however, knew of his incredible gambling habit that became stuff of legend.
Gambling artist Francis Bacon
A close Friend to Freud, Francis Bacon, the Irish-born British figurative painter is known for his bold, raw and emotionally charged imagery. Born in the first decade of the 20th century, Bacon would go on to become an outlier, unaffiliated with any particular movement within the art world. He remained an enigmatic figure throughout much of his life despite achieving post-war success in London in the late 1950s. He is now considered one of the most important figurative painters of the last century.
Despite having no formal training, Bacon started as a furniture and carpet designer early in his career. Heavily inspired by Picasso, he would go on to become a painter. Bacon created haunting images of abstracted figures, isolated bits of flesh set against cold, stark geometric spaces and fractured portraits of close friends and associates (including Freud). The devilish grins, gnawing teeth and gaping mouths that lace his work still enthrall spectators to this day. His visceral oil paintings made in thick impasto on exposed canvas share an expression of frozen horror that only the artist himself was all too familiar with.
Living large
Though a difficult man to work with, Bacon carried with him, sophistication, wit and charm. He enjoyed socializing and spoiling friends with nights out in smoky restaurants. He ordered only expensive bottles of champagne or tins of caviar. A formidable presence who lived for the moment, Bacon imbued an intensity that only helped fuel his notoriety among the social circles of the period. Remaining a prolific painter until his death in 1992 Bacon’s art contains a depth that matched only by the ferocity with which he lived: socializing, drinking and yes, copious amounts of gambling. Back in 2013, a 1969 triptych “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” made by Bacon of his friend smashed auction records, selling for a mind-blowing $142.4 million.
The great muse: Gambling
Based on the lifestyles of both artists it must come as no surprise that they had an affinity for gambling. Their attitude toward games of chance was much like their attitude toward life, all or nothing. Outsiders might consider the cavalier handling of their own finances in the casino as reckless, but to Freud and Bacon, win or lose it was all about the thrill of playing.
Friends close to Freud would claim, “He would gamble until he had nothing left and that somehow freed him up to then start painting again.” Bacon would remark that for him gambling was the center of two extremes. He enjoyed the feeling that it brought: jubilation when winning and despair when losing.
The artists’ love of the gamble is better understood when looking at how they approached painting. Both would claim that when painting they felt like they walked a razor’s edge between control and losing that control. Each stroke of the brush was the difference between brilliance and disaster. The nature of paint was as unpredictable as one’s luck at a casino table. The higher the stakes, the greater the thrill.
Later in life after finding financial fortune in his career, Freud would give up gambling, claiming that it lost its thrill when he realized that he could afford to lose $1 million in a day and not feel the repercussions. To Bacon however, chance was his god, and he never gave it up. Often frequenting the private roulette parlors of England and Monaco.
Win or Lose
Freud, who loved horses, would frequently bet at the horse track. Unfortunately, for Freud, his compulsion to gamble, whatever the stakes, lead many racetracks in the south of England to ban him by 1983. This was mostly due to the reputation he built as a bad debtor. This did not deter the artist however, and he would often use disguises to enter his favorite horse races and continue to bet; even having friends help him in the process.
At the height of his gambling addiction, Freud was forced to pay back as much as $6 million to bookies due to his losses. If he did not have the collateral to back up his misfortune, Lucian would often trade his artworks as a form of repayment or even as a thank you for putting up with his often compulsive and brash behavior. Some of his favorite bookies even sat for Freud. Their lives entwined with gambling, painting, and Lucian immortalizing them on canvas.
Deep in debt
There were times that those close to Freud found it difficult to get him to pay back his debts. Gallerists and bookmakers would hunt him out of seclusion to get back what he owed. Freud even owed the infamous (and dangerous) Kray twins money. Fortunately, for Freud, one of the Krays considered the artist as one of his favorites. So they gave him plenty of time to pay off his surmounting financial burdens. Sadly, this is something not many others could claim.
Win or lose, for Freud, gambling provided tension. He reveled in it, and later in life would claim, “There is nothing quite like gambling. The chance throw of the dice, as it were, that can leave you without a roof, or bring the thrill of winning. It is like galloping or jumping through fire, sort of beyond what is sensible but it makes you feel alive.”
A love affair with chance
Bacon’s love for gambling came in the form of playing roulette from the casinos in SoHo to the Monte Carlo in Monaco he adored the atmosphere of casinos. The lively conversation, the beehive of activity, and the frenetic energy that only gambling could offer, all taking place in a very concentrated space. This feeling would eventually seep into his paintings. At the height of his fame, Bacon once famously lost over $60,000 in one night playing roulette. It nearly ruining him financially. Luckily, for him, it only took a matter of months to pay back the debt.
Chance and accident played a major role in his work. In his early days, Bacon would host gambling parties at the local British pubs to earn money for food and new painting supplies. Everything he earned went back into his work. After the Second World War the mood in post-war London was existential, everything felt like a risk. The ephemeral quality of life permeated the town, and it felt like it could end at any moment.
He first went to Monaco in 1946, staying at the compact hotels that dotted the coast before moving from villa to villa. Back in London, the local nightspots and hangouts catered perfectly to someone like Bacon. He preferred to spend time with the seedy and sometimes criminal characters of the poorer class of London’s East End rather than rub shoulders with the social elite who purchased his work for thousands. Individuals who met at the bars, back alleys and gambling halls of the city were the raggedy and unfortunate, including Freud. For Bacon, gambling was more than a game of chance. It reflected the parabolic nature of life itself: rising like a wave and crashing down in the end.
Conclusion
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