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.

The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky

   1999; 359 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres : World History; Spain; France; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    The Basques.  Like most people, I’ve heard of them, but don’t know much about them.

 

    I vaguely remember them making headlines back in the 1970s for killing Spanish policemen by remotely detonating bombs.  So I’m pretty sure the Basques are concentrated in some area of Spain.

 

    They have their own language too.  It seems neat that they’re maintaining their heritage, but jeez, if you live in Spain, shouldn’t you be speaking Spanish?  I also recall that their language bears no resemblance to any other European tongue, which makes it a mystery as to where they came from and when they showed up.

 

    I’m a lover of History, so my ignorance about the Basques is embarrassing.  Fortunately, one of my favorite History authors, Mark Kurlansky, wrote a book on them, The Basque History of the World.

 

    Let’s find out why the Basques don’t like to speak anything but Basque.

 

What’s To Like...

    Mark Kurlansky divides The Basque History of the World into three sections, namely:

        Section 1 : The Survival of Euskal Herria

        Section 2 : The Dawn of Euskadi

        Section 3 : Euskadi Askatuta

 

    Those titles represent a progression in the self-identity of Basques.  “Euskal Herria” means “the Land where Euskera (“Basque”) is spoken”, and simply denotes a place.  “Euskadi” is a word coined by a Basque nationalist, Sabino Arana, and can be roughly translated as “Euskera speakers together”, and implying that it is a country, not merely a location.  “Euskadi Askatuta” means “Free Basqueland” and recognizes that achieving an independent Basque nation may necessitate a revolution.

 

    Each section has an introduction plus 4-6 chapters, and things close with a "Postscript" titled “The Death of a Basque Pig”.  The book chronicles the Basque history from the earliest writings about them (courtesy of the Romans since the Basque ancestors left no written records) up through the 1990s (the time of publication).  A lot of the latter chapters go decade-by-decade, starting with the 1930s; many of the earlier chapters use the clever template “The Basque Xxx” format (“The Basque Cake”, “The Basque Whale”, “The Basque Beret”, “The Basque Ear”, etc.) to pique the reader's interest.

 

    The Basque History of the World nicely combines both historically important events, such as the importance of the math formula “4 + 3 = 1” and the idiocy of witch trials, with enlightening trivial tidbits, such as recipes for cat dishes, which sounds yucky, but are useful when the Spaniards are besieging your city and you're starving.  I chuckled when the renowned “Bilbo swords” were mentioned; they have nothing to do with Hobbits.  I came away with a much greater appreciation as to what Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” masterpiece is all about, and was sobered by the fatalistic Basque adage “una bache mas, un cabron menos”, which I'll leave for you to look up the translation, or read this book.

 

    Mark Kurlansky includes various maps, drawings, and photos throughout the book.  Some of the latter could use a bit of computer-enhancement, but maybe that’s just a printing issue with the paperback format I read.  The Index at the back of the book comes in handy, although it’s limited to proper nouns.  Beyond the “basted cat” entrée already mentioned, there are various other Basque culinary recipes mixed in with the text .  This is a Mark Kurlansky trademark in the books he writes, and they sound delicious, but they are wasted on me since my cooking skills are abysmal.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.6/5 based on 438 ratings and 240 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.87/5 based on 4,409 ratings and 422 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Auto de fe (n., phrase) : a public ceremony during which the sentences upon those brought before the Spanish Inquisition were read and after which the sentences were executed by secular authorities.

 

Excerpts...

    By the sixteenth century, witchcraft should have seemed a ridiculously old-fashioned accusation.  In 787, Charlemagne had outlawed the execution of witches and made it a capital crime to burn a witch.  A tenth-century Church law, Canon Episcopi, demanded that priests preach against belief in witchcraft as superstition.  By the fourteenth-century, stories of witchcraft were widely dismissed among educated circles as a primitive belief of peasants.

    But by the late sixteenth century, the Canon Episcopi, which had been universal Church law, was being circumvented by the claim that society was faced with a new and more virulent form of witchcraft and therefore the old laws did not apply.  (pg. 93)

 

    The Basques are not isolationists.  They never wanted to leave Europe.  They only wanted to be Basque.  Perhaps it is the French and the Spanish, relative newcomers, who will disappear in another 1,000 years.  But the Basques will still be there, playing strange sports, speaking a language of ks and xs that no one else understands, naming their houses and facing them toward the eastern sunrise in a land of legends, on steep green mountains by a cobalt sea—still surviving, enduring by the grace of what Juan San Martin called Euskaldun bizi nahia, the will to live like a Basque.  (pg. 351)

 

Revolutions are always easier to admire from across the border.  (pg. 135)

    The editing is good in The Basque History of the World; I only noticed two typos: finely/finally and peeled/pealed.  As you’d expect of a Historical Non-Fiction tome, the text is incredibly clean: just a single “damn” which got in only because it was part of a direct quotation.

 

    I did find one “fact” in the book to take issue with.  On page 138, the author asserts that the word “honcho” is of Basque origin, coming from their “jauntxo”, meaning a wealthy, powerful, rural landowner.  Plausible, but every other etymological source on the Internet says "honcho" comes from the Japanese word “hancho” meaning a group leader, and brought back to the US by servicemen stationed in Japan.  Methinks somebody in Basqueland was pulling Mark Kurlansky’s leg.

 

    Also, it should be noted that there is a definite pro-Basque, anti-Spanish slant to The Basque History of the World, particularly when the subject is the iron-fisted Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco.  I doubt that Mark Kurlansky will offer any apologies for this, but I do recall one of the Basque nationalist groups, the “ETA”, being classified as a Terrorist Group due to the bombings they carried out against the Spanish police back in the 70s.

 

    8 Stars.  Overall, The Basque History of the World gave me a much better understanding of history – both ancient and recent – of the Basque people, the Basque culture, the Basque heroes, and most of all, the Basque hopes for a country of their own.  Such aspirations may or may not be realistic, but they certainly are inspirational.