Veterans Day: Goya on War

Written by Lambert Strether of Corrente.

“War is cruel and cannot be refined.” —Letter from William T. Sherman to James M. Calhoun, E.E. Lawson, and S.C. Wells, September 12, 1864.

For Veterans Day, I usually perform a Goya etching. disaster of war (gallery) Because the amount of militarism and imperialist triumphalism in this country makes me itch. This Veterans Day, given the genocide in Gaza, the meat-grindering of Ukrainians by proxy, the quest for greater control over Iran, and the pervasive “real men go to Beijing” zeitgeist, I I decided to pay a little more attention to Goya’s war art. His subject matter is essentially aspects of war that veterans you know may dream about but rarely talk about. First, let’s take a brief biographical look at Goya’s art during the Peninsular War. 1807-1814 (Mr. Goya’s handwritten title in the album of disaster The evidence given to a friend reads: “The Fatal Consequences of Spain’s Bloody War with Bonaparte and Other Emphatic Caprices” (Buonaparte, deadly effects of severe Spanish influence). Let’s start with a short biography of Goya. Then we’ll look at a picture. Following a digression on Goya’s technique, we will look at three of Goya’s etchings. disaster. You have to watch it slowly, because the work speaks for itself. To that end, I’ll try to explain the technical details thoroughly and leave the interpretation up to you. Finally, I would like to share my thoughts at 30,000 feet.

Francesco de Goya y Lucientes

Biography of the great Australian critic Robert Hughes Bitter gourd may be added to Readingwrote:

As the 18th century turned into the 19th century, what was in front of Goya? Steady work at rising prices for the court and nobility. Security, wealth, and honor in the approaching retirement. The idea that Goya is or ever was a social rebel is completely false. His art, even at its most extreme or yet to come, was a terrifying protest against disorder and superstition, not a call to absurdity. He has done very well as the king’s primary painter, and will continue to reap the fruits of his labor as long as the court lasts. (In 1812, when he was 66 years old, his house, furniture, possessions, and cash on hand were worth a total of about 350,000 reais.) As a portrait painter, he had no rivals.

(But then) Spain effectively entered into two wars. The first was the formal event of raising an army and fighting a proper battle: Wellington and his generals against Napoleon, the Peninsular War. The second was a civil war waged by Spanish irregulars, partly against other Spanish factions, especially the hated French. The “guerrillas” (as they called themselves) were poorly armed. Napoleon was not the last general to make such a mistake regarding the guerrillas.

After 1814, Goya had to prove his loyalty to Napoleon-occupied Spain. Otherwise, he would have lost his valuable job as first court painter after Ferdinand’s reinstatement. What he was actually working on most of the time was producing a series of 80 etchings known as The Tragedy of War.

For reasons unknown, these were not published during Goya’s lifetime. In fact, they did not appear until 1863, 35 years after his death.

They are a reflection on the evil, sadism and cruelty inherent in war itself. Oddly enough, Goya never takes sides. French soldiers do terrible things to Spanish peasants, partisans, and women. But then the Spaniards do equally terrible things to the French and to other Spaniards…The concept of a “noble proletariat” is far removed from Goya’s ideas. He has seen too much. He knows too much. He occasionally allows himself some horribly ironic culture jokes, but mostly he takes the war head-on without irony, with a passion so deep that it even brings tears to his eyes. In these etchings, Goya ignores “glory”, “patriotism” and all other issues. It’s a tremendously fascinating achievement, and it spills over into his paintings.

May 3, 1808

About this painting Hughes wrote:

On May 2, 1808, a large group of civilians attacked a Mamluk (Moorish) cavalry led by a French general in the center of Madrid. The next day, May 3, the French counterattacked. Six years later, in 1814, Goya painted two monumental paintings to never forget these events. The Uprising of May 2, 1808 (May 2, 1808) and the Execution of Partisans on May 3, 1808.

May 3, 1808 is the painting by which all future paintings of tragic violence will be based. It is truly modern, unsurpassed in newness, and so graphic that it remained hidden from public view for the first 40 years of its existence, even though it was a state commission. It remained in storage.

The surface is rough and does not have a smooth finish. The blood on the ground had been smeared thickly with deep red alizarin and scraped off with a palette knife, making it look crusty and scratchy, like real blood smeared by the convulsions of a dying body. Masu. We cannot “read” the scars that disfigure the man’s face as he falls to the ground, but as signs of painted trauma, they are indescribably shocking. That inaccuracy conveys the idea that you can’t see them.

I want you to concentrate, so I’ll stop here. on the picture.

Sidebar about etching

from Park West Gallery:

Instead of color, Goya sought dark shadows and shading to express his harsh views in The Tragedy of War. He did this using a combination of etching, drypoint, and aquatint.

Goya began the process by coating a copper plate with wax and etching the lines with a sharp, needle-like tool. The plate was then immersed in an acid bath, allowing the acid to eat into the exposed metal. The plate was then washed and the wax was melted and removed.

Next, Goya employed drypoint technology. He scratched directly onto the plate to create more textured, uneven lines in his work. Lines created this way will be softer when the final impression is created.

To create additional tonal effects, Goya used the aquatint technique. This involves sprinkling powdered resin onto a plate and heating it until the resin melts and hardens. Acid is applied to the plate and eats away the metal surrounding the resin. As a result, small channels are created that hold the ink depending on how long it has been exposed to the acid. The longer the exposure time, the darker the ink will be on the print.

The final step in the printmaking process was to ink the plate and wipe off the excess. As a result, ink remained on the etched lines. The plate was placed on damp paper and passed through a printing press, which transferred the mirror image of the plate onto the paper.

Through this tedious process, Goya showed generations of art lovers the harsh reality of war. Goya is often considered one of the first modern artists, and through his “War Disasters” we can understand why. His unflinching commentary on war and morality speaks to us through time and influences us today in a way that few artists can.

One curator commented:Goya: Drawings from the Prado Museum collection” about using these techniques in disaster of war:

Viewing these works as prints violates all the conventions of the previous European etching tradition. The murky puddles of aquatint look like oceans of blood, and the focus is personal, direct, and confrontational. Not only limbs, but also constituent structures are cut off and violated. Many of the artistic strategies Goya promoted were not only pictorially opposed, but also anticipated the means of Expressionism and Surrealism a century later.

Aquatint that looks like a pool of blood. Good to know. For etching-

Plate 7: Que Valor!

(“What courage!”). from National Gallery of Scotland:

This print is notable as one of the few of Goya’s War Disasters etchings that depict well-known events. This work depicts the heroic deeds of a woman named Augustina Zaragoza (also known as Agustina de Aragon) during Napoleon’s siege of Zaragoza in 1808. She is depicted standing over the body of a fallen Spanish artilleryman and firing a cannon at the French army. Her white dress stands out in sharp contrast to the darkness of the canon and body. Augustine is said to have jumped to the city’s defense when she learned that the Spanish militia had been killed or wounded too badly to fight, and legend has it that she took matches from the hands of dead soldiers. It is said that he grabbed the gun and ignited the cannon. Her courage was known throughout Spain and was credited with repelling the French army, at least on that occasion.

this is A dish where Goya shows off his heroic actions.. The question of whether Goya was reporting or imagining it will come up later, but here it seems that he is reporting on it, even though it is not a primary source. (I think the white dress and the cannon barrel don’t have ink because they’re part of the plate that the acid didn’t eat into. It’s completely different from what I did in LightRoom.)

Plate 13: Amarga Presencia

(“Bitter Presence”). Post from “”every painter paints himself” begins with the wonderful observation that the painting resembles a skull and that the archway on the left is Goya’s eye hole. I refuse to quote this because it then develops into an interpretation that seems to be a combination of gender studies and “anxiety of influence” (here it is). In my own fanciful interpretation, the soldiers are “bitter beings” to the women who are about to be raped, and the memory of the rape is “bitter existence” to the artist, bitter enough to remain with Goya even after his death. It is. We might also see the uninked parts of the plate (the world outside Goya’s skull, the woman) as sweet rays of “present” but powerless reason.

Plate 39: grande hazaña con muertos

(“A heroic feat! Against the dead!”) Here’s one interesting response from The Art Blog.Goya’s emotional art about war and human folly still rings true today.“:

I said, “Heroic feat! Together with the dead! ”, which depicts the naked and mutilated bodies of several men hanging from trees, comes to light last week regarding the rape, torture and mutilation of an Israeli woman by Hamas soldiers on October 7th. It was not to be seen as a mirror image of similar atrocities committed by Israel (not to confuse Hamas here with the majority of the Palestinian population, who are also victims of the war).

But see Associated Press.How two accounts of sexual violence uncovered on October 7 fueled global debate over the Israel-Hamas war“from National Gallery of Scotland:

This disturbing image is one of the most extreme in the “Horrors of War” series, in which the naked body of a mutilated, tortured and castrated man is hung from a tree as a warning to others. is shown. Goya was one of the first artists to remove all chivalry, romance, and idealism to reveal the harsh realities of war. He captured something archetypal about modern warfare that resonated with the next generation of audiences. This print was controversially adapted by the artist in the 1990s Jake and Dinos Chapman. This formed the basis of one of the brutal three-dimensional tableaux, in which scenes from the series were recreated using dismembered mannequins covered in fake blood.

And indeed, what a boring time the 90s were.

conclusion

of Library of Congress Subject Headings for disaster of war It is possible to be almost neutral.

– Spain – Madrid, Comunidad de – Madrid

– Spain – Zaragoza

– 1810-1820

– fable

– brutality

– death

– starvation

– Goya, Francisco, 1746-1828

– Peninsular War, 1807-1814

– Romanticism

– Victims of war

I recently came across this thread about wars between super colonies of ants. It (arguably) also includes atrocities, death, famine, and war victims, but it is unlikely to be allegorical or romantic.

If it really exists alien As we observe the Earth from far above the atmosphere, we realize that a war between ants and humans is not that different from a war between humans, given how we humans organize ourselves. Some may wonder if they are thinking.