doriastories's review against another edition
5.0
Phenomenal, enthralling biography of Goya, chock full of reproductions - many in full color - of a wonderful variety of his works, covering his entire, long and storied career. A joy and thrilling to read, and savor. Hughes keeps the painter's life in historical comtext, adding background where needed, but not excessively. A wonderfully balanced and terrifically well written book, which I was sad to finish.
alundeberg's review against another edition
5.0
On a crisp, bright day in March 2019 I walked from my rental on the Plaza Mayor to the Prado Museum to see Velazquez's "Las Meninas" and his other works. As I wandered the great rooms looking at one cerebral court painting after another, I turned into another to see paintings so visceral, so disturbing, I stopped in my tracks. Dark scenes of human depravity, dark masses of people on a pilgrimage to hell, men cudgeling each other as both sink into the earth, a giant pulling of the head of his son with his teeth: Francisco Goya's "Pinturas Negras" looked down from the walls at me. Painted for his eyes only near the end of his life, these paintings depicted one who is thoroughly disillusioned with all around him. How, I wondered, did Goya get to this point?
Art critic and historian, Robert Hughes, who also wrote "The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding", one of the best works of nonfiction I have ever read, also turned his eye to Goya. His biography of the Spanish painter is again a masterpiece of criticism and study, not only plumbing the depths of Goya's psyche, but that of late 18th century Spain. Hughes is fearless with a wry humor and has a knack for the historical allusion to show how the world of Bourbon Spain often mirrors our own.
Francisco Goya's indomitable will that served him throughout his life is why we know of him today. While the rest of Western Europe flourished under the Renaissance into the Enlightenment, Spain, hidden behind the Pyrenees, remained backwards and in darkness as it was dominated by the Church, the Inquisition, and leaders who feared new knowledge and liberal values. Despite the fact that Ferdinand and Isabella sent conquistadors to the Americas, their sole focus was on wealth, not learning; at home they expelled Spanish Jews and Muslims, further plundering their own lands as it was the Arab Caliphs who created and maintained the canals and irrigation that made the countryside so lush. People were still burned at the stake into the late 1700's. Education was in shambles, creative thought looked down on, the great artwork hidden away in the royal palace. It was not, to say the least, the best place for a young man with artistic ambitions.
Goya spent the bulk of his early career making and designing tapestries and passed over by the royal family for a position within the court. It was in part of his connections and his defiance of death (he lived twice as long as a typical Spaniard and died at 82) that he finally became Painter to the King, and he used his political cunning to stay in that position through the reigns of the somewhat enlightened Carlos II, the unimaginative Carlos III, and the despotic, Trump-on-steroids Fernando VII, who after Spain's unlikely defeat of Napoleon, plunged the country into further darkness and despair. Goya became an acute observer of life under the Inquisition as a result of his own despair; early in mid-life he became deathly ill and lost all of his all of his hearing as a result.
An aficionado of the bullfight and a participant of the "majo" (where we get the word "macho") culture, Goya not only had to rebuild his health, but to reassert his masculinity and talent to maintain his reputation while living with a disability. Deafness isolates; one can be both part of and apart from a gathering; it renders one vulnerable and reliant on others and also a prisoner to one's mind. Observation is survival; one must read the room and look for clues in other's tics and behaviors. Through his illness he felt the full force of being subjected to an arbitrary power outside of his control; he knew what it meant to have life upturned. This new insight elevated his art and imbued it with greater psychological depth; he also empathized more with the throne's subjects. He may have been Painter to the King, but his allegiance was to the people.
While he continued to get royal commissions, he also explored the art of etching and created many collections, from the "Capriches" satirizing the double-standards of Spanish life to the "Desartes", the first collection of war journalism that recorded the horrors of war with France and war in general. War, he depicted, was horrible for all involved; the dead were dead, no matter what side they fought on. Even his most famous work of the war, "The Third of May, 1808", does not declare a winner or loser, but reiterates the savagery of war. Regardless that he was an old, deaf man, the ambiguities in his art did not sit well with Fernando VII who demanded complete fealty from all around him. Fernando's restoration and subsequent authoritarian rule, tested Goya's ability to survive. He retired to a farmhouse outside the city and used its walls to paint the madness he saw in the world outside.
These are the paintings that stopped me in my tracks at the Prado two hundred years later.
Art critic and historian, Robert Hughes, who also wrote "The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding", one of the best works of nonfiction I have ever read, also turned his eye to Goya. His biography of the Spanish painter is again a masterpiece of criticism and study, not only plumbing the depths of Goya's psyche, but that of late 18th century Spain. Hughes is fearless with a wry humor and has a knack for the historical allusion to show how the world of Bourbon Spain often mirrors our own.
Francisco Goya's indomitable will that served him throughout his life is why we know of him today. While the rest of Western Europe flourished under the Renaissance into the Enlightenment, Spain, hidden behind the Pyrenees, remained backwards and in darkness as it was dominated by the Church, the Inquisition, and leaders who feared new knowledge and liberal values. Despite the fact that Ferdinand and Isabella sent conquistadors to the Americas, their sole focus was on wealth, not learning; at home they expelled Spanish Jews and Muslims, further plundering their own lands as it was the Arab Caliphs who created and maintained the canals and irrigation that made the countryside so lush. People were still burned at the stake into the late 1700's. Education was in shambles, creative thought looked down on, the great artwork hidden away in the royal palace. It was not, to say the least, the best place for a young man with artistic ambitions.
Goya spent the bulk of his early career making and designing tapestries and passed over by the royal family for a position within the court. It was in part of his connections and his defiance of death (he lived twice as long as a typical Spaniard and died at 82) that he finally became Painter to the King, and he used his political cunning to stay in that position through the reigns of the somewhat enlightened Carlos II, the unimaginative Carlos III, and the despotic, Trump-on-steroids Fernando VII, who after Spain's unlikely defeat of Napoleon, plunged the country into further darkness and despair. Goya became an acute observer of life under the Inquisition as a result of his own despair; early in mid-life he became deathly ill and lost all of his all of his hearing as a result.
An aficionado of the bullfight and a participant of the "majo" (where we get the word "macho") culture, Goya not only had to rebuild his health, but to reassert his masculinity and talent to maintain his reputation while living with a disability. Deafness isolates; one can be both part of and apart from a gathering; it renders one vulnerable and reliant on others and also a prisoner to one's mind. Observation is survival; one must read the room and look for clues in other's tics and behaviors. Through his illness he felt the full force of being subjected to an arbitrary power outside of his control; he knew what it meant to have life upturned. This new insight elevated his art and imbued it with greater psychological depth; he also empathized more with the throne's subjects. He may have been Painter to the King, but his allegiance was to the people.
While he continued to get royal commissions, he also explored the art of etching and created many collections, from the "Capriches" satirizing the double-standards of Spanish life to the "Desartes", the first collection of war journalism that recorded the horrors of war with France and war in general. War, he depicted, was horrible for all involved; the dead were dead, no matter what side they fought on. Even his most famous work of the war, "The Third of May, 1808", does not declare a winner or loser, but reiterates the savagery of war. Regardless that he was an old, deaf man, the ambiguities in his art did not sit well with Fernando VII who demanded complete fealty from all around him. Fernando's restoration and subsequent authoritarian rule, tested Goya's ability to survive. He retired to a farmhouse outside the city and used its walls to paint the madness he saw in the world outside.
These are the paintings that stopped me in my tracks at the Prado two hundred years later.
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