New Side of Bacon

For more than two decades Artist Peggy Bacon has been impartially decapitating friend & foe with neat strokes of her pen, pastel and pencil. She has also illustrated children's books. Last week a huge retrospective exhibition of Baconiana at Manhattan's Associated American Artists Galleries gave gallery-goers a chance to see what her art added up to. Of 142 exhibits, covering the walls of four large rooms, Bacon-lovers saw 35 pastels (including twelve caricatures of men & women who nevertheless remain Miss Bacon's friends), 74 drypoints (including The Socialist Meeting and Backstairs Gossip), 13 etchings (including Colored Folks and Mad About Dancing), twelve lithographs (including caricatures of Heywood Broun and Mayor LaGuardia), eight drawings.

But the emphasis in this show was not on caricature. A less famous side of Artist Bacon's work was revealed in her increasingly Daumier-like preoccupation with the seamier side of life. Like Honore Daumier, with whose work hers has often been compared, Peggy Bacon has descended the social ladder to portray Manhattan's grimmest alleys, its courtrooms, bars, garish streets at night, garbage cans crawling with kittens, drunks at home the morning-after. Result: her art is more inclusive and more subtle without becoming less satiric.

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