Bacon's portraits are an interrogation on the limits of the self. Up to what degree of distortion does an individual still remain himself? To what degree of distortion does a beloved person still remain a beloved person? For how long does a cherished face growing remote through illness, through madness, through hatred, through death still remain recognizable? Where is the border beyond which a self ceases to be a self?

Kundera's best-known work is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Biography
Kundera was born in 1929 at Purkyňova ulice 6 (6 Purkyňova Street) in Brno Czechoslovakia to a middle-class family. Milan Kundera (Czech pronunciation: [ˈmɪlan ˈkundɛra]; born 1 April 1929) is the Czech Republic's most recognized living writer.

A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature he has been nominated on several occasions. Of Czech origin he has lived in exile in France since 1975 having become a naturalised citizen in 1981.