The Goya exhibition at the MFA wraps up in a few days so the gallery was full, full of people peering at pictures and manipulating their audio tour cassettes. A broad range of pictures from his long career as court painter to many regimes was on display. I'd just taken some people through the American gallery and only wanted to see his Disasters of War prints.
Rowan Williams in his Grace and Necessity had written: 'Goya, we could say, 'loves' his depictions of the brutalities of the Peninsular War, not because he relishes cruelty in itself but because he paints what is there, not what he wants to see, and is acutely aware of the risks of representing such horrors.' Was he right?
Out of 80 odd, maybe 24 were on display, aquatint etchings mostly using oak gall ink made between 1810 and 1820 on themes related to the French occupation, then later, after the Bourbon restoration, the reinvigorated Inquisition, through all of which Goya had served as portraitist to those in power.
Made in secret by the artist in his sixties and only made public decades after his death, they are harrowing: images of dismemberment, torture, various modes of execution, corpse disposal, refugee flight, humiliation, starvation, rape--every kind of human-induced indignity and disruption. Those who suffer are dismal; those who inflict, disgusting. Altogether, a telling argument for our failure as a race.
The etchings seem quickly sketched as if they were eyewitness representations, but they must have been from memory or killing fields and execution sites. What a labor to visit these gruesome places, perhaps at night, to record these pathetic outrages, what discipline.
The captions are often rhetorical questions or ironic assertions, as if the artist were trying to relieve his horror with some kind of hollow humor: 'What More Can Be Done?', 'I Saw This Myself,' 'The Worst is Begging,' 'They Do Not Want To,' 'Nor Do These (these last concerning rape), 'It Cannot Be Helped,' (of a firing squad), 'Bury Them and Keep Quiet,' 'Will She Live Again?' (of a woman being beaten), 'The Same,' (a decapitation).
Susan Sontag wrote about this series: 'While the image like every image is an invitation to look, the caption, more often than not, insists on the difficulty of doing just that.' Indeed. Not simply numbers, not informative, the captions seem to speak a voice of helplessness in sorrow. These scenes must be recorded but the devastation can't be remedied, the pain can't be relieved.
We're all on the moral spot when looking at or looking away from such images; human suffering diquiets and convicts us--as it should. I sense nothing like glee in these prints; indeed they seem like a burdensome labor of love--love of what? Love of mankind? Love of the life of making images? Love of the power of putting the truth (at last, or perhaps still) down on paper?
I was put in mind of the recent film The Missing Picture using carved figurines to represent what no images exist of--the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. Very strange, very moving, as are Goya's works. All must be acknowledged, all must be swallowed. If not this, then what? If not by me, then by whom?
To you, tormented witnesses and victims, I can only provide fellowship by looking, watching, and admiring the doleful but courageous loneliness of your self-appointed but mandatory task.
Rowan Williams in his Grace and Necessity had written: 'Goya, we could say, 'loves' his depictions of the brutalities of the Peninsular War, not because he relishes cruelty in itself but because he paints what is there, not what he wants to see, and is acutely aware of the risks of representing such horrors.' Was he right?
Out of 80 odd, maybe 24 were on display, aquatint etchings mostly using oak gall ink made between 1810 and 1820 on themes related to the French occupation, then later, after the Bourbon restoration, the reinvigorated Inquisition, through all of which Goya had served as portraitist to those in power.
Made in secret by the artist in his sixties and only made public decades after his death, they are harrowing: images of dismemberment, torture, various modes of execution, corpse disposal, refugee flight, humiliation, starvation, rape--every kind of human-induced indignity and disruption. Those who suffer are dismal; those who inflict, disgusting. Altogether, a telling argument for our failure as a race.
The etchings seem quickly sketched as if they were eyewitness representations, but they must have been from memory or killing fields and execution sites. What a labor to visit these gruesome places, perhaps at night, to record these pathetic outrages, what discipline.
The captions are often rhetorical questions or ironic assertions, as if the artist were trying to relieve his horror with some kind of hollow humor: 'What More Can Be Done?', 'I Saw This Myself,' 'The Worst is Begging,' 'They Do Not Want To,' 'Nor Do These (these last concerning rape), 'It Cannot Be Helped,' (of a firing squad), 'Bury Them and Keep Quiet,' 'Will She Live Again?' (of a woman being beaten), 'The Same,' (a decapitation).
Susan Sontag wrote about this series: 'While the image like every image is an invitation to look, the caption, more often than not, insists on the difficulty of doing just that.' Indeed. Not simply numbers, not informative, the captions seem to speak a voice of helplessness in sorrow. These scenes must be recorded but the devastation can't be remedied, the pain can't be relieved.
We're all on the moral spot when looking at or looking away from such images; human suffering diquiets and convicts us--as it should. I sense nothing like glee in these prints; indeed they seem like a burdensome labor of love--love of what? Love of mankind? Love of the life of making images? Love of the power of putting the truth (at last, or perhaps still) down on paper?
I was put in mind of the recent film The Missing Picture using carved figurines to represent what no images exist of--the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. Very strange, very moving, as are Goya's works. All must be acknowledged, all must be swallowed. If not this, then what? If not by me, then by whom?
To you, tormented witnesses and victims, I can only provide fellowship by looking, watching, and admiring the doleful but courageous loneliness of your self-appointed but mandatory task.
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