Francis Bacon: Couplings review – a taboo-busting opus of sizzling flesh

Gagosian Grosvenor Hill, London
Sublime paintings of sex in all its guises unlock entire worlds of beauty and terror – and reveal Bacon as the true heir to Picasso

The authority of Francis Bacon’s art is papal. I am not referring to the paintings inspired by Velázquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X that made him famous. It’s just that walking into Gagosian’s immaculate selection of his paintings feels like exploring the art treasures of St Peter’s and the Vatican, so sublime is this display. If these pictures really were in the Vatican, though, they’d have to be veiled, perhaps even in a secret room where only cardinals could peek. For this is a sustained exploration of how Bacon saw sex.

An imaginary curtain swooshes back as you enter a chapel-like space to see Two Figures, painted in 1953 and last exhibited in Bacon’s retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1971. It has the sense of some supreme revelation. Two men make love on a bed that’s an expanse of crumpled white sheets. As they do it they look out of the canvas at us – but their faces are distorted, blurred. One might be grinning into a camera. It’s as if they are gleefully showing us their crime, their identities disguised for their protection. When Bacon painted this in the 1950s, he really was portraying a crime. That thrills him. The white bed is enclosed in a transparent box whose outline in perspective draws you towards the central act. It resembles the glass booths that enclose those renowned paintings of popes. Yet it has the opposite meaning.

At Gagosian Grosvenor Hill, London, until 3 August.

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