Goya - Rose-Marie & Rainer Hagen

   2003 & 2022; 95 pages.  Translator: Karen Williams.  Part of a 135-book series.  New Authors? : Yes.  Genres : Art history; Art Appreciation; Biography; Spain; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9½*/10.

 

    I like art.  In high school and junior high I enjoyed taking art classes, but I never took any in college.  Apparently such classes aren’t considered beneficial for a degree and career in Chemistry.

 

    I’m nutso about anything painted by Salvador Dali.  I’ve got several books giving comprehensive coverage of his works.  But beyond him, I know very little about any other artists.

 

    So it was time to learn about Francisco de Goya.

 

What’s To Like...

    Goya is divided into seven section, plus an appendix.  They are:

Part 1. : Cheerful Scenes for Gloomy Places

Part 2. : People of Yesterday – the Portraits

Part 3. : Nightmare and Social Critique

Part 4. : They Don’t Smile – Spain’s Women

Part 5. : One Can’t Tell Why – The Disasters of War

Part 6. : The Skies of Empty – the “Black” Paintings

Part 7. : A Love of Fear – the Bullfights

Appendix : Life and Work

 

    Each section covers a stage in Goya’s artistic career, and are arranged in chronological order.  The authors, Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen, also briefly discuss what was going on in Goya’s life during each stage.  Each section also includes a half dozen or so of Goya’s artworks from that particular phase of his life.

 

    My favorite sections were Parts 3, 5, and 6.  Goya was a definite liberal, stuck in a place and time where such views could easily get you executed, either by the Roman Catholic Inquisition, the Napoleonic French army, the Spanish royalty, or the powers behind the throne.  That Goya managed to earn a living as a painter amongst all these folks, and stay alive, is nothing short of amazing.

 

    Each painting is accompanied by a short explanation of it: its title, the year(s) it was done, its size, the medium it was done in (e.g.: “oil on canvas”), and its present location.  Brief, revealing details of each of these works (such as facial expressions, clothing styles, and background colors) are given, and often expanded upon in the text.  I found these to be positively enlightening.

 

    I was surprised to find that I was familiar with several of Goya’s paintings, although admittedly I would not have been able to tell you who painted them.  And although the cheerfulness in his early paintings will lift anyone’s spirits, it is his depictions of the horrors of war, and other terrors, that will stay with you for a lifetime.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 87 ratings and 9 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.72*/5, based on 254 ratings and 17 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Cartoons (n.) : canvases in the format of the tapestries to be woven.

 

Excerpts...

    They (Goya’s sketches) are images which demonstrate no one-sided support either for the ideals of the French Revolution or for the glorious name of Goya’s own country.  They show the slaughter of both French and Spanish, and it is often impossible to tell for which side people are killing or dying.  This was new in the history of Western art.  Since the Egyptians and Greeks, the portrayal of battle had invariably served to glorify the victor.  (…)  Goya is interested only in what people do to each other, in how chaos and war turn peaceful citizens into brutal beasts.  (pg. 58)

 

    Open mouths were – and are still – considered taboo, both in society and, for a long time, in art.  Allegedly because they make the face ugly, but in truth more probably because the lips and mouth mark the start of the digestive tract – a part of the human body that remains anonymous, a part that cannot contribute to the desire for individuality as expressed, for example, in portraiture.  (…)  To look down the throat is to remember that our intellectual existence, which we consider our real one, is dependent upon organs and instinctual drives that we cannot control and at whose mercy we lie.  (pg. 81)

 

The fact that Goya includes himself in a royal portrait, in exactly the same way as his famous predecessor [Velasquez], shows how his opinion of himself has grown.”  (pg. 21)

    It’s hard to come up with anything to quibble about in Goya.  There is zero profanity in the text, but that’s to be expected in a book of Art.  There is one “nude” painting, accompanied by a “clothed” version of the same woman in the same pose, so guests could be shown whichever one wouldn’t offend or bore them.  There’s nothing lewd about the nude, but it did get the Inquisition’s attention, who let Goya know they’d be keeping a close eye on him.

 

    The book was originally written in Spanish and later translated into English.  And “English” in this case means “British”, not “American”.  But I didn’t find that to be distracting.

 

    Reading this book gave me a deep appreciation for Goya’s paintings, but I was expecting that.  As an artist, Goya is amazing.  What surprised me was the way the “real” Goya came through via the textual detailing of his life.  I had forgotten that Spain was fighting a savage civil war at this time, which was then capped off by Napoleon invading, conquering, and brutalizing the country.

 

    The book makes me eager to study Goya’s complete works, and fortunately, I have an e-book on my Kindle, 824 pages in length, and taking up oodles of my device’s storage memory, showing every one of Goya’s masterpieces.  Now that I’m acquainted with him, it’s time to get immersed in his works.

 

    9½ Stars.  Goya is only 95 pages long.  If you have a book report due tomorrow, where the subject matter must be the Fine Arts, and you haven’t even started reading anything yet, this book may be your salvation.  And though I read the hardcover version, there’s an instantly downloadable version of it for your e-reader.