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Thread: Goya's Black Paintings

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    My Countship is not of this world Comte Arnau's Avatar
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    Default Goya's Black Paintings

    Goya is an enigma. In the whole History of Art few figures are as complex for studying as the brilliant artist born in 1746 in Fuendetodos, Aragon. Enterprising and indefinable, a painter with no rival in all his life, Goya was both painter of the Court and painter of the people. Both a religious painter and a mystical painter. He was both the author of the beauty and eroticism of the 'Maja desnuda' and the creator of the explicit horror of 'The Third of May, 1808'. He was an oil painter, a fresco painter, a sketcher and an engraver. And he never stopped his metamorphosis.

    During the last years of his life, an already deeply deaf Goya, painted 14 bleak agonized paintingsal secco on the walls of his Quinta del Sordo (House of the Deaf Man), a villa now destroyed. Those fourteen works, intended not to be seen by anybody, passed to art history known as the Black Paintings. Free from social pressures and far from the light of the Court, living alone in physical pain, spiritual torment and disillusionment, he would express his inner rich world, his worries and fears, a clear forerunner of generations that were to come much later.


    Atropos or The Fates


    The Goddesses of Destiny or Daughters of the Night are headed by Atropos, the inexorable goddess of death, who carries a few scissors to cut the thread of life.


    The Two Old Men


    In the picture two elderly figures dressed in friar's habits stand before a black background. The man in front has a long grey beard, is tall and rests on a cane. He may represent Saturn, the god of time. Beside him is a highly caricatured figure, whose face is animal-like. This figure seems to be shouting into the ear of his companion, which might be an allusion to Goya's deafness.


    The Witchy Brew


    Two elderly figures loom forward from a black background; although they are assumed to be men, their gender is not readily apparent. The mouth of the left figure is drawn into a grimace, possibly from lack of teeth. In stark contrast to this animated expression, the face of the other figure hardly seems alive at all. Its eyes are black hollows and the head in general bears the aspect of a skull.


    Fight with Cudgels


    Two men fighting one another with cudgels, as they seem to be trapped knee-deep in a quagmire of mud or sand. Probably a political allegory.


    Witches' Sabbath or The Great He-Goat


    Satan, in the form of a hybrid goat-human figure rendered in silhouette, presides in moonlight over a coven of disfigured, ugly and terrified witches. The Devil holds absolute command over the women, who quake before him in fear. Probably a metaphorical satire on the credulity of the age, a mocking condemnation of both the popular superstition of the era and the witch trials of the Spanish Inquisition.


    The Reading


    A group of six men huddled together are reading a printed page held in the lap of a seated central figure. They are often thought to be politicians reading, and passing comments on, a newspaper article about themselves. X-ray reveals that the image was dramatically altered before Goya settled on what is now on the canvas. At some stage a landscape in the background showed a mounted rider. The central figure in white at one point had large horns, or possibly bird wings, seemingly growing out of his head.


    Judith and Holofernes


    A personal reinterpretation of the narrative of the Book of Judith, in which the protagonist saves Israel from the assault of the general Holofernes by seducing and beheading him. Judith is the only historical figure who can be identified with certainty among the Black Paintings. It is possible that Holofernes represents the Spanish King, whom Goya privately despised. Holofernes' death was often depicted in art as a symbol of the defeat of tyranny. But a number of other interpretations are possible. The work may allude to Leocadia, his young maid and companion in his final years. More probably, the picture deals generally with the power of women over men. From a psychoanalytic standpoint the painting can be seen as dealing with the topic of castration—a view which should be placed in the context of Goya's personal situation: he was an old man of more than 70 years living with his much younger lover.
    < La Catalogne peut se passer de l'univers entier, et ses voisins ne peuvent se passer d'elle. > Voltaire

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    My Countship is not of this world Comte Arnau's Avatar
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    A Pilgrimage to San Isidro


    A Pilgrimage to San Isidro shows a view of the pilgrimage towards San Isidro's Hermitage of Madrid that is totally opposite to Goya's treatment of the same subject twenty years earlier in The Meadow of San Isidro. If the earlier work was a question of depicting the customs of a traditional holiday in Madrid and providing a reasonably accurate view of the city, the present painting depicts a group of prominent figures in the night, apparently intoxicated and singing with distorted faces. Figures from diverse social strata also figure in the painting. The theme of the loss of identity in crowds in this painting painting can be seen as a precursor to expressionist painting.


    Man Mocked by Two Women


    Two women with maniacal smiles seemingly laughing at a simple-minded man masturbating at the left hand of the picture. Despite their jeers, the woman to the right is also likely masturbating which -in the absence of any written or oral comment from Goya on any work on the series- art critics and historians believe lends to the image's futile and sterile intent.


    The Buried Dog


    The head of a small black dog is gazing upwards. The dog itself is almost lost in the vastness of the rest of the image, which is empty except for a dark sloping area near the bottom of the picture: an unidentifiable mass which conceals the animal's body. The Spanish artist Antonio Saura called The Dog "the world's most beautiful picture".


    Procession of the Holy Office


    An enigmatic procession of unknown people with distorted gazes -one seems to wear the habit of the Inquisition- are heading to an undefined place across an irreal landscape. They are concentrated on one little angle of the picture, provoking a clear imbalance.


    Saturn Devouring His Son


    Disturbing portrait of the god Saturn consuming one of his children, and one of six black paintings with which Goya decorated the dining room. Saturn's child's head and part of the left arm has already been consumed. The right arm has probably been eaten too, though it could be folded in front of the body and held in place by Saturn's crushing grip. The titan is on the point of taking another bite from the left arm; as he looms from the darkness, his mouth gapes and his eyes bulge white with the appearance of madness. The only other brightness in the picture comes from the white flesh,the red blood of the corpse, the white knuckles of Saturn as he digs his fingers into the back of the body, and his piercing eyes, wide with madness. There is evidence that the picture may have originally portrayed the titan with a partially erect penis, but, if ever present, this disturbing addition was lost due to the deterioration of the mural over time or during the transfer to canvas; in the picture today the area around his groin is indistinct. It may even have been overpainted deliberately before the picture was put on public display.
    Various interpretations of the meaning of the picture have been offered: the conflict between youth and old age, time as the devourer of all things, the wrath of God and an allegory of the situation in Spain, where the fatherland consumed its own children in wars and revolution. There have been explanations rooted in Goya's relationships with his own son, Xavier, the only of his six children to survive to adulthood, or with his live-in housekeeper and possible mistress, Leocadia Weiss; the sex of the body being consumed can not be determined with certainty. If Goya made any notes on the picture, they have not survived; as he never intended the picture for public exhibition, he probably had little interest in explaining its significance. It has been said that the painting is "essential to our understanding of the human condition in modern times, just as Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling is essential to understanding the tenor of the 16th century".


    Leocadia, the Seductress


    A woman commonly identified as Goya's maid, companion and possibly lover, Leocadia Weiss, is dressed in dark, almost funeral maja dress, and leans against what is either a mantelpiece or burial mound, as she looks outward at the viewer with a sorrowful expression. The painting contains a sense of peace and air of reconciliation absent in the other works from the series. The work may represent a personification of Melancholy, or given the relationship between artist and model, "the symbol of the fire of love and of the home and the presentiment of coming death."


    Asmodea or Fantastic Vision


    Two figures, one male and one female, are shown airborne, hovering above a broad landscape. The woman wears a white dress covered by a red-rose coloured robe. Both seem fearful, she covers the lower half of her face with her robe, his face is deeply disturbed. They are each looking in opposite directions, while he points to a town on top of a mountain on the right of the canvas. Critic Evan Connell notes that the mountain's shape resembles Gibraltar, a refuge for Spanish liberals during the aftermath of the Peninsular War. According to writer Rolfh Kentish, it is an example of Goya's "versatility and capacity to reflect large and small groups, darkness and light, the naked and the clothed, landscape and interior, animals, day-to-day themes and themes of the imagination and, sometimes, a strange mixture of the two."
    < La Catalogne peut se passer de l'univers entier, et ses voisins ne peuvent se passer d'elle. > Voltaire

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    In art classes I tried to emulate Goya as part of our GCSE course. In my half hearted way I came across an interesting "fact" by the way of a family friend who was a psychiatrist. He said that Goya was amongst a few artists whose drawings could openly captivate the attention of his patients.

    He was a great artist, it has to be said. I could stare at his work all day. What that says about my mental health, I'll let others speculate

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    Junior Member Chris's Avatar
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    He's, of course, amazing, but I've always found it difficult absorb his work. It’s too painful for me to take in---like looking at imagery of abused animals.

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    nevermind stupid, you wouldn't get it alexandra's Avatar
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    these are some of my favorite paintings by one of my favorite artists. goya is simply amazing and diverse.

    i enjoy his paintings of the royal court because you'll notice he is literally mocking them and they never seem to get it. goya's portraits were always incredibly striking; this is not easy to do. take the portraits he did of the duchess of alba, or the maja (nude or dressed). and the black paintings are magnificently eerie. i love "witches sabbath", "the great he-goat", and "saturn eating his son". occult stuff like that was hard to find at the time; i mean, there was william blake and alfred kubin was sort of weird, but i'm not even sure if kubin was in the same time period, although i think blake was. i believe henry fuseli did a painting called "the nightmare" that was occultish in nature too. but still, kind of a rare thing at the time.

    i suggest checking out his aquatints and etchings from the black period as well.

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    My Countship is not of this world Comte Arnau's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by alexandra View Post
    i enjoy his paintings of the royal court because you'll notice he is literally mocking them

    i suggest checking out his aquatints and etchings from the black period as well.
    I totally agree. up
    < La Catalogne peut se passer de l'univers entier, et ses voisins ne peuvent se passer d'elle. > Voltaire

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    Quote Originally Posted by Count Arnau View Post
    I totally agree. up
    I somewhat sick of that generalized hipotesis: maybe he was simply told to be realistic and he take command too much literally. Remember he was the chamber's painter, even if he was heads above anyother painter of his time...I guess he known the old Castilian lemma: "de buen nacidos es ser agradecidos", "of good-born ones, is to be grateful". Another point in behalf of my hipotesis is that pre-fotografic era portraits were mainly a way of remembering gone people.

    Anycase Goya is one genious. Because he was not only a fantastic painter but also a person (if not an intellectual) very aware of the things going on around him as he reflected so clearly in his "ouvres" along the years.

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