FRANCISCO GOYA
"El sueno de la razon produce monstuos"
"Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters"
"Too much sanity may be madness. But maddest of all, to see life as it is, and not as it should be!"
One of the most curious things about Spain is an undefinable schism that runs though just about every thing. There is a quite serenity above a very artistic , passionate , tumultuous under current. The calm, serene country meadows, and then these horrific and huge Black bulls that are often waiting in the shadows. The great author Chevantes and Don Quixote and the crazy storks who make outrageous , giant nest dam where every where they please and often the most awkward and funny places. The exotic Flamenco dances and the crying songs , much like the noon Islamic prayer cry. You can even see it in their jewelry and hear it in their music.
Mystical, romantic, you bet and then some.
Jewel171There are three seminal cultural influences that makes up Spain; The Iberians, the indigenous people of Spain, think folk art; The Romans, think frescos and mosaics and then the Moors think Islamic design and geometry . Non of these influences gel and thus creates a concophany and beauty at the same time. This is gravy for art.
To set the stage for Goya and his times consider :
A contemporary of Napoleon, Beethoven and the establishment of Washington DC , the Louisiana purchase , and the foundation of Mexico independent from Spain.
Goya is considered the last of the great masters and the first modern .
Following in the footsteps of Michealangleo Da Vinci , Rembrandt and his fellow country man Valasques. He set the stage modernism which would a occur 50 years latter with namely Picasso and Dali. In real terms after Goya passed on, Spain went to sleep for 50 years. Nothing notable was produced, other than Goya’s THE DESASTERS OF WAR series which were published 30 years ofter his death.
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes born 1746 Aragon. Aragon a northern province just under Spain. A land checkered with castles harkening back to the midevil. lived in a house bearing thefamilies crest of his mother. His father earned his living as a gilder. A gilder is a crafts man how works with gilding gold leaf on the decorative objects. About 1749, the family bought a house in the city of Zaragoza and some years later moved into medieval kingdom of Aragon. Arogaon famed for Katharine of Arogon Queen of Englandthe “First” wife of Henrey the 8th in the 16th century.
juxtaposing the end of his life to his being bindings, in that they are more similar and telling. Having much more to do with each other than the turbulent middle of Goya’s life and career.
It is a curious note, Goya wasn’t a classically trained painter. not of the academy and establishment .Then he ended his life having throughly broken away from it. he was an out sider who found his way into the establishment, and more courageously out of it.
At the end of his life, he finally lost faith in or became threatened by the restored Spanish monarchy's anti-liberal political and social stance and left Spain in May 1824 for Bordeaux and then Paris. In 1826 he left Spain for good, he moved to Bordeaux where he died in 1828 at the age of 82. He was of Catholic faith and was buried in Bordeaux; in 1919 his remains were transferred to the Royal Chapel of St. Anthony of La Florida in Madrid.
As to his career, he started in the shadow of the courts and establishment painting tapestry in the Rocco manor. The Rocco style is very colorful, ray, and happy. He became quite accomplished as a portrait painter and then court painter. He one of his specialties was painting children.
When he turned 46, his life and work radically changed. He fell violently ill , suffering from delusions and metal laments. It left him deaf for life and he was there on challenged with mental illness. it has bee speculated that the course my be do to Meniere’s disease and or lead poisoning. Meniere’s disease is a disorder of the inner ear rthat can affect hearing and balance to a varying degree. It is characterized by episodes of vertigo . Goya complained of having fits and passing out. Clearly, there were some neurological affects and thus lead to psychological repercussions. Curious, the moderns much had their own bouts do to laudanum and other drugs. All these related , a procurers to the coming Psychoanalytic movement started by Freud. Prior to modernism , we un officially know of the intimated relationship of psychology and art. Much has been said about Michalangeelos moods and temper and most clearly Van Goghs.
Moving on, after this illness, his work went from bright and optimistic, to pessimistic and dark. His subject matter went from light and for the most part superficial, to deep and probing. This was an unusual and gutsy move; it also was the beginning of modernism which put humanism in a new light, by the questions they asked.
The great masters represented a tradition of figurative painting, Portraits, historical events, and biblical tales. What distinguished them from the moderns is accuracy of representation .Subject matter was more important than expression and was controlled by the patrons. You can think of the old masters as historians, biographers and reporters. they were not creators of tale. They were like non fiction writers, everything was in relation to something else.
Goya, broke from this tradition, and issued in the moderns. In essence, the moderns took more control of what they chose to paint. They became like fiction writers. They were freer to use their imaginations and be more expressive. They were not Picasso later put it, everything is real , this includes your imagination. This was a seed for what was to come, 50 years before Freud and the subconscious. the how and why of their art work took center stage.
Going back to the great masters, despite being great artist, they were bogged down in the who, what , where and when; of course, being true artist, they snuck in their whys and how, imagination and expressiveness, but it was unofficial. Curious note, you can characterize the eras prior to Goya as much of repression and dominance of Religion. The Victorian area could be conceived as a culmination of this tension and a schism of two two worlds; secularism which included science and the arts and tradition and Religion.
This crack started to open up with Goya and Darwin’s discovers. For Goya his chance to break free of tradition came through the coming pandemonium. First, Napoleons invasion of Spain and the horrific guerilla war that followed. This turned Goya’s world up side down and he witnessed much of it and never forgot.
Then , his illness which left him deaf, then challenged by mental illness which was reflected in his work.
When you look at Goya’s work, through much pain and bewilderedness, there is a theme, is there a God? His day and age left him with allot of despair; and because of this his work went from being colorful and optimistic, to dark and of the grotesques. From light, airy, colorful paintings which characterized the Rococo ( vain, pretentious, haughty and of the nobility, think Versailles and the French kings and queens)
Goya’s work was social realism, questioning mans true humanity.
Here lies the depth in Goya and his art, he took what was most pressing and relevant of the day, and asked you to emphasize and understand. You can feel the sincerity and the times; they weren't contrived, they were about what was going on in the day. Think artistic photojournalist of today with a deep moral , humanistic observation.
Here is where Goya truly became famous. First his masterpiece, the 2nd of May, where in he recorded Napoleons men executing captured rioters. He painted Napoleon men as faceless, machine like, and the peasant full of life and in the spot light. He painted Napoleon men as one and in one dark expression, and the peasants in the light , faces shown, full of emotion and pleading.
Then, the charge of the Mamelukes were in Napoleon’s moorish mercenaries viciously put down a spanish peasant uprisings. They were ordered to charge and subdue the rioting citizens. The crowd saw the Mamelukes as Moors , provoking an angry response. Instead of dispersing, the crowd turned on the charging Mamelukes, resulting in a ferocious melee. The Moors were Islamic occupiers of Spain responsible for 100’s of years of fighting and finally expelled from Spain just before Spains great renaissance, the period of columbus and Magellan in the 1400s.
Then came a group of etchings known as the Disasters of war, which he chronicled Napoleons occupation of Span and its disastrous effects. These were primarily etchings which went into a folio; much like your coffee table books. This book wasn't published for 30 years after his death. In this series,
Goya issued in an interest in the grotesque and imagination and this is suppose to distinguish modern art from the old masters.
It was no other than Napoleon,
The perpetrator of these disasters in spain that coined the term,
A picture is worth a thousand words.
It is a curious note and lends insight into Goya, that he started his in the Rococo movement which his quite frivolous, ornate and decadent. He gravitated away from this right away. Then when he had a chance,
he managed to get away from art and the nobility which again is quite vain. Then finally left Spain to france because he couldn't stand the conservative mentality that dominated Spain at the time. Amongst all of these, during napalolianic occupation of Spain, he remained a pacifist .
However, his paintings spoke volumes and it was a very clever form of passive resistance. It was a precursor to Ghandi. It’s funny that it is no other than Napoleon who said, a picture is worth a thousand words and that it's Napoleon who was known for shutting down the press. He never shut down Goya and it is away, it is Goya who did the most damage to Napoleons character. Again, it was Napoleon who said the winners write the history books, in this case it did not happen, the artist wrote the history book.
I believe Leonardo Da Vinci beat him to the punch by what he drew in his notebooks which I consider his best works of art.
What really distinguished Goya, is the depth and drama associated with his message and meaning to his work. Goya gave his work allot of emotional weight and asked great questions about humanity.
The more you learn about him the more meaningful it gets.
his best work was taken from direct experience and reflects what was most meaningful of the day. This is another element that distinguished modern art from the old masters.
Then Goya’s Illness and black period. Goya became violently ill which left him deaf. Possibly mongieres desease and from this point he was never the same . He became with drown and showed sings of mental illness.
He went from being an optimist , to a pessimist over night. from a well established portrait painter of beauty and color, to a dramatic realist of darkness.
He went on to buy a home out side of madrid and there he painted horrific paintings on the walls. this is called his black period. In essence, this period was much about his struggles with mental illness.
To paint a greater picture of the time and place of Goya’s life, the early
1800, you must appreciate .
- Intellectually, Europe was dominated by french culture.
Napoleon was on the move .
Beethoven produced his 9th symphony.
Abraham Lincoln and Darwin were born.
After Napoleon’s down fall the power shifted to Victorian England and slowly to America.
The capital of the united states was moved to washington.
the Louisiana purchase took place.
the first passenger train in England.
Mexico broke from Spain then become a republic
the first photograph was taken.
The seeds were sown for the dramatic changes to occur in the latter half of the 1800s.
In particular, photography began to emerge. It slowly started to compete with painting and in 50 years time changed painting forever. It began to dominate the pure recording functions of painting,and as artist do, they sought new ways of art. After impressionism, and the turn of the century, figurative art and tradition was at its zenith, and ended the area.
In final notes, the sayings go, does art reflect reality or does reality reflect art? This speaks loudly of Goya. He definitely reflected his reality and most curiously, along with the time and culture, his work changed the reality of art.
Then , as Shakespeare said, Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
Sadly, and very mistakenly Goya’s unique and very significant contribution has been over looked and misunderstood. In reality, he is much more like Michalangelo and Da Vinci than realized. He took part in a radical change much like the Renaisance. The only real difference is that the great painters of the renaissance were known and celebrated in their day and Goya wasn’t. And most poignantly, Goya was a liberator of of imagination in visual art. This, in many ways is as significant and arguably a greater contribution to western art. It was the seminal beginnings of the 20 century which the full messier is still unraveling.
Once more, Goya and Napoleon overlap.. Napoleon , arguably one of the finniest generals in History said, The winners write the history books. So true, and guess what they fail to mention? yup, the ugliness of war and the atrocities. He did not get away with it and much to do with Goya. Goya's pictures where most definitely most memorable and worth as Napoleon said a thousand words and even more.
One of the greatest ironies , like most heros and the heros story, Goya got away with it.
Mind you, the Spanish inquisition was still afoot; there was a violent guerrilla war all around him; power was constantly shifting hands; the average age of death was 45, the age in which Goya made his greatest statement; and no other than Napoleon, the very conquer of Europe and the center of european society who was known for shutting down the press, and decent. Goya survived and out lived it all in the end.
"His [Francisco Goya's] debt to the Christianity of the eighteenth century is contained in the idea that politics was just adopting from the Gospels: the conviction that man has a right to justice. Such a statement would seem utterly conceited to a Roman, who would doubtless have looked upon the Disasters as we look upon photographs of the amphitheatre...But if Goya thought that man has not come onto the earth to be cut to pieces he thought that he must have come here for something. Is it to live in joy and honour? Not only that; it is to come to terms with the world. And the message he never ceased to preach, a message underlined by war, is that man only comes to terms with the world by blinding himself with childishness."
"Goya’s savage verve, his harsh, brutal genius, captivated Des Esseintes. On the other hand, the universal admiration his works had won rather put him off, and for years he had refrained from framing them, for fear that if he hung them up, the first idiot who saw them would might feel obliged to dishonour them with a few inanities and go into stereotyped ecstasies over them."
PS. this has been incredibly had to write about. It seemed as I learned more, the more and more connections and nuances I saw. I'm far from done and very important . I never imagine it would reveal so much, in so many ways.
5am KR
What I just realized ... this relates perfectly to what is going on right know... the conservatives trying to repress change, and the idealist trying to break free. This is exactly what happened during Goyas time. funny how history repeats it self.... Right before Goya, Spain was in an aimless period of decline.. Napolean's war in Spain was much like Vietnam and Afrainistan. it was the first of his down fall, first Spain, then Russia and finally Waterloo.. I wish we would learn from history.
