The Crucible of New York: Francis Bacon and the 1950s The decade of the 1950s witnessed a seismic shift in the landscape of Western art, largely spearheaded by a group of American painters who rejected the established norms of European tradition and forged a distinctly modern aesthetic. Among these figures, Francis Bacon stands as a towering, often unsettling, presence – a man haunted by his own experiences and translating them into c…