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Traces the life, career and paintings of the Spanish court painter, Francisco Goya, with information on the times in which he lived and other artists of that era.Tags
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The World of Goya 1746-1828 is a Time-Life Book published in 1968 on the life and works of the Spanish artist Francisco Jose de Goya Y Lucientes. The commentary with its critiques seem as valid and informative today with the given that current tastes are always on the change in the world of art. A complaint would be that the text and the art were often separated losing impact for both. There are many memorable paintings but I would not argue with the Prado Museum's placement of Goya's 'cartoons' portraying the blackness and brutality of Spain's war with Napoleon as of special interest and they are well represented here.
Quotes: (page 8) “For if El Greco was the painter of Spanish spirituality and Velazquez the painter of her pride, show more then Goya is the painter of her anarchical individualism; The stubborn, basic unruliness of the Spanish mind. No one better than Goya evokes the unique Spanish pessimism about man's fallen state. It is a feeling so profound as to preclude all faith in political, social and economic progress, and ordained to regard all temporal leaders, theories, and organizations, especially governments, as irrelevant at best and comically tragic ( or tragically comic) at worst. His two great predecessors offer visions of the things that sustain the Spanish temperament. Goya completes the picture by offering a vision of the things that torment it---its heart of darkness.”
(page 108) “Yet Goya, like many of his countrymen, could see around him that reason had never prevailed; Spanish life was shot through with corruption, the royal court was the gathering place of indifferent, privileged boors. Against this background, Goya began to explore, through etchings, the dark underside of this pretentious world. His first effort was a series of 80 prints, the Caprichos (caprices), published in 1799...With these works, Goya took etching---and social comment---to heights seldom reached before or since.”
(page 153) “In fact it is no easier to read the true political intentions of the Disasters then it is to read Goya's true thoughts about the war. His apologists have made much of the fact that he was careful to show the soldiery wearing French uniforms, but he was also careful to show Spanish partisans engaged in activity no less reprehensible than that of the foreign troops. A traditional story recounts Goya's servant asking him, 'Why do you paint these barbarities that men commit?' and Goya replying, 'To tell men forever that they should not be barbarians.'
Even after the war Goya made no effort to publish the Disasters, knowing they could only offend the restored King and his court by reminding them of their responsibility for the desastres de la guerra.” show less
Quotes: (page 8) “For if El Greco was the painter of Spanish spirituality and Velazquez the painter of her pride, show more then Goya is the painter of her anarchical individualism; The stubborn, basic unruliness of the Spanish mind. No one better than Goya evokes the unique Spanish pessimism about man's fallen state. It is a feeling so profound as to preclude all faith in political, social and economic progress, and ordained to regard all temporal leaders, theories, and organizations, especially governments, as irrelevant at best and comically tragic ( or tragically comic) at worst. His two great predecessors offer visions of the things that sustain the Spanish temperament. Goya completes the picture by offering a vision of the things that torment it---its heart of darkness.”
(page 108) “Yet Goya, like many of his countrymen, could see around him that reason had never prevailed; Spanish life was shot through with corruption, the royal court was the gathering place of indifferent, privileged boors. Against this background, Goya began to explore, through etchings, the dark underside of this pretentious world. His first effort was a series of 80 prints, the Caprichos (caprices), published in 1799...With these works, Goya took etching---and social comment---to heights seldom reached before or since.”
(page 153) “In fact it is no easier to read the true political intentions of the Disasters then it is to read Goya's true thoughts about the war. His apologists have made much of the fact that he was careful to show the soldiery wearing French uniforms, but he was also careful to show Spanish partisans engaged in activity no less reprehensible than that of the foreign troops. A traditional story recounts Goya's servant asking him, 'Why do you paint these barbarities that men commit?' and Goya replying, 'To tell men forever that they should not be barbarians.'
Even after the war Goya made no effort to publish the Disasters, knowing they could only offend the restored King and his court by reminding them of their responsibility for the desastres de la guerra.” show less
goya is really not one of my faves. so many ghoulish pictures.
Life and works of Francisco Goya
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88+ Works 2,330 Members
Richard Warren Schickel was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on February 10, 1933. He received a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1955. He became a noted film critic, Hollywood historian, and prolific author and documentarian. He reviewed films for Life magazine from 1965 until it closed in 1972, show more then wrote for Time until 2010 and later for the blog Truthdig.com. He wrote 37 books on movies and filmmakers and wrote or directed more than 30 documentaries including The Men Who Made the Movies. He wrote biographies of Woody Allen, Marlon Brando, James Cagney, Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood, Lena Horne, and Elia Kazan. He also wrote a memoir entitled Good Morning, Mr. Zip Zip Zip: Movies, Memory, and World War II. He died from complications of dementia on February 19, 2017 at the age of 84. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
190+ Works 2,011 Members
Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was the great Spanish painter and graphic artist whose fame rests not only on his superb painterly abilities, but also on the darkness and drama of the subject matter he recorded. Rembrandt's powerful influence is easily observed. Born in Saragossa, he settled in Madrid in 1774. His early paintings are lively, show more cheerful, and almost rococo in feeling (e.g., his tapestry cartoons in the Prado). In 1789 Goya was appointed official court painter---a position once held by Diego Velazquez, whom he admired and emulated. In 1794 Goya became deaf, and his mood changed profoundly. He began to draw and etch. The Caprichos (1796--98), aquatinted etchings which date from that period, present satirical, grotesque, and nightmarish scenes. His famous, unsparingly realistic, Family of King Charles IV (critics still wonder how he got away with it) was painted in 1800. When Spain was taken over by Napoleon in 1808, a terrible civil war ensued. Goya, torn between his Francophile liberalism and his Spanish patriotism, more than all else hated the cruelties of war. The 65 etchings that comprise Los Desastres de la Guerra are among the most moving antiwar documents in all art. Fourteen large mysterious murals, the so-called Black Paintings, were painted toward the end of Goya's life. He spent his last years in Bordeaux, in voluntary exile from the Spanish Bourbon regime. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The World of Goya, 1746-1828
- Original title
- The World of Goya, 1746-1828
- Original publication date
- 1968
- People/Characters
- Francisco Goya
- Original language
- English
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 462
- Popularity
- 66,176
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.75)
- Languages
- Dutch, English, French
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 8
- ASINs
- 20
