“Solo Goya”: Order and Disorder

[CTyankee]

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Mourning Portrait of the Duchess of Alba by Francisco Goya. 1797. New York Hispanic Society.

Oh, my. The duchess. In all her black lace, her late husband’s red sash at her waist and those eyebrows! She is commanding, you have to give her that...

The duchess points to the ground in front of her dainty, pointed shoes that reads “solo Goya” -- only Goya. It looks like she means it, for she points downward to the words scrawled below her and her rings announce to the viewer who is the artist and who she is, so sit down and shut up.

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This wonderful exhibit at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is a feast for the eyes of all, Goya fans and anybody else who cares passionately about art and its deeply felt impressions on us. I am writing to share this with you from my recent visit there for the exhibit, which contained works that are privately held, and leaves on January 19.

Of course, I could not include every work in this exhibit...it is vast and the lithos of war’s destruction could be another entire essay..but my impressions of several works that left me deeply thoughtful are...

Las Viejas. 1811-1815. Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France
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This is a scary portrait. We have two aging women, a servant and her mistress, in a terrifying decayed state and they don’t even seem to know it. Looking closely, you cannot even see the older woman’s mouth...it has been effaced by the artist to show the ravages of time and the delusions of vanity. As Fred Licht, author of the artist’s biography, Goya, describes it

“Syphilis has corrupted the face of the maid into a hideously deformed snout, while the mistress, haggard and toothless but rouged and coiffed in the latest fashion, looks on with rheumy eyes as page after page of a scandal journal is turned for her amusement by her companion. Behind the two women, a winged old man wields a broom aloft, ready to sweep this human offal away."

Self Portrait in the Studio. 1795. Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid

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What I like best in this painting: his wonderful matador jacket, the hat with spikes on its brim so small candles could be affixed to it (yikes!) to enable his habit of painting at night, and the sunlight flooding into the studio, with flecks of lint in it. Bravo, Goya...you have carried this off...

Self Portrait at 69 Years. 1815. Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Madrid

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This is a small-ish work but compelling. Gone are his lithos of the confident, pleased Goya and here is the man (now 69 years of age) who has “been through the wars” (literally, if you understand his experience with the French invasion of Spain and the Peninsula Wars). Time has worn his face. He no longer cares about his ruffled shirt and bravura matador jacket. He is alone, old, a bit gaunt, and with a look of great sadness. It is hard to see this without feeling pity for the man, once the Spanish royal court’s pampered artist, who now stares back at us in such honesty and regret.

An interesting article from the Boston Globe on the mounting of this exhibition is here http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/style/2014/10/04/from-madrid-mfa-special-relationship-brings-goya-masterworks/DuktgN8f6boMjNVRlkRIUI/picture.html

Goya paid a terrible price in living through Spain’s experience with Napoleon’s conquest and the further disturbances that shook his whole universe. This is perhaps a lesson for us: we can...all of us...experience great upheaval in our lives and yet we live. And art tells us this and it is why art matters in our lives...

[2naSalit]

1. Very informative!

Thank you.

I love Boston's MFA!! The first museum I can remember visiting as a child. Last I was there was a very long time ago. Love what I know of Goya too, thank you for sharing not just the images but some very nice interpretation of it.

[CTyankee]

2. Thanks. The MFA has a great curatorial staff. Always ingenious and

Last edited Sat Jan 17, 2015, 08:30 AM - Edit history (1)

brilliant, even!

The privately held lithos were very hard for me to see because the museum was mobbed on the day I went...the smaller stuff got kind of lost. I should have gone back for another look.

Even my teenaged granddaughter was impressed...of course the fact that she went at all was a real milestone in her development. She actually read the wall notes and knew that the rings on the duchess has been interpreted as proof that the duchess and Goya were having an affair (probably not though). She kinda enjoyed that...

[2naSalit]

4. Well let me Kick this

to keep it active until folks can get a look. Already rec'd it.

[CTyankee]

5. Hey, thanks...hope it gets folks going but hey, it's a holiday weekend!

[2naSalit]

6. True that.

I am not too sure what day it is sometimes, unemployment will do that.

I do like that you post these, they always teach me something about art that makes me feel better after learning them.

[CTyankee]

7. Oh, how nice you are! That makes me feel wonderful!

I hope, during this bad time of unemployment for you, that you can find some joy in art. There is so much solace in it. In fact, I think a lot of art is in response to emotional pain and difficulty. I have said here so many times that art always saves you. Whenever I get into emotional pain I remind myself of that and I go to my research in art and get engrossed and I am happy and engaged. It's a kind of miracle, actually, or at least a temporary "cure."

[2naSalit]

8. Thank you.

This bout of unemployment isn't permanent and it's not nearly as bad as other times. I do expect to return to my seasonal job in April.

I love art, it is my world though not necessarily the vast category of fine art. I have been called an artist, I do my own therapy with it. Fortunately I have countless media to work in from paints and pastels to block printing, vocal performance, photography, beaded imagery, embroidery (I used to embroider favorite album cover images on shirts/jackets for my friends back in the hippie days) and many other media... several of my works have seen the gallery in some location or other and then there were performances with symphony which I will always cherish as some of my best memories. But I also admire the knowledge of art historians, I wouldn't know much about the fine arts and artists without that input. And there's always so much to learn. Art does so much good for one's soul or psyche. Yeah, I'll go with "miracle" for all that art is to so many.

[CTyankee]

3. Hey, Goya lovers on DU! This is right up your alley!

[brer cat]

9. You are so good with this, CTyankee.

Write a book and I will buy it, and enjoy reading it and rereading it.

I loved the two elderly women despite their infirmities. When I am really old, and I am getting there, I want to dress up in a lace dress with diamonds dripping from ears and fingers, and especially a diamond-encrusted arrow in my hair. Even without teeth, she is something to behold. It's an attitude that old age just cannot kill. I do wish I could know what Goya was thinking when he painted it. Did Fred Litcht give any enlightenment there?

Thank you for all the time you take to do these Friday posts.

[CTyankee]

11. I'm afraid that art historians have pretty much thought that this major theme of

Goya's is that of the foolishness of vanity and the irrelevance of the upper classes to indulge in their own vanity. And, of course, the certainty of death. In this painting death is right behind the two women, waiting to sweep their ashes away. Goya believed that painting could give us a moral commentary on human vices and errors and indeed some of his most compelling works are in that vein and are hard to look at. He worked with themes of madness and of horror, with piles of bodies, severed limbs and heads. The "Disasters of War" series is pretty grim.

Goya also worked in different art media...chalk, crayon, tapestries even painting on ivory. In fact, one of his paintings was reworked as a tapestry, and both are in the exhibit side by side. If you click on the link, it shows that one (but not the tapestry)...it's the one of the young women tossing the strawman in the air.

[blogslut]

10. Here's a kick.

Sorry I missed this earlier.

[CTyankee]

12. I think there is so much to Goya that I could do a series of essays on his works alone...

Sebastian Smee's review of the show in the Boston Globe is quite good and reveals that the show is centered around Goya's different themes.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2014/10/16/extraordinary-mfa-exhibit-shows-goya-full/NqcxnfZAaMRVFduarIvBdI/story.html