Catherine Howe is a research candidate at the Courtauld Institute of Art, writing a thesis titled ‘Francis Bacon’s French Influence(s): From Surrealism to Post-Structuralism’. Much of her research considers Bacon’s paintings through psychoanalysis and its impact upon writers associated with ‘dissident’ surrealism and post-structuralism, in light of his inspiration and reception in France from the late 1960s onwards. Central to this are the writings of Jacques Lacan and the engagement with and critique of them by Julia Kristeva, Antonin Artaud, Gilles Deleuze and Didier Anzieu for an examination of Bacon’s paintings. Further to this, she considers transgression and selfhood through a positioning of Bacon’s paintings alongside texts by Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris, the latter a close friend of the artist and his main representative in France.