Word: goya
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...simple visions take on philosophical dimension because of his typically Spanish ability to combine gaiety and humor with the grotesque. Though this does not mean for him specific social concerns as it does with Goya or Picasso. Miro's world even as it exhibits the primal images of Jungian psychology does not cause pain. It does not probe or disturb the way Klee's calligraphic revelations of the subconscious seem to. Using one of his recurrent forms--the ladder Miro prefers to drift into a sea or sky world. As he said when the war broke out "I felt...
Tapping U.S. collections only, the exhibition turns up some unexpected contributions along with old favorites. Goya was a bullring aficionado. Winslow Homer, while covering the Civil War, took time out to paint Zouaves pitching quoits in camp. Philadelphia's Thomas Eakins painted scullers and wrestlers; George Bellows not only haunted the fight ring painting boxing classics (Dempsey and Firpo), but also painted tennis at Newport and polo at Lakewood. In Ground Swell, Edward Hopper caught every yachtsman's thrill at passing the last buoy and heading seaward in a light breeze...
Compositionally, the Disasters concentrate on action to the extent of losing visual balance. Goya exaggerates gesture to heighten emotion or point a message. In "No se Puede Mirar" for example, Goya shows who the ends of rifles can outbalance human beings...
...Tauromaquia continues the theme of war and the dark figure of the bull dominates these drawings. In two of the works Goya describes how man has fought this dark creature from time immemorial. In another, he shows that when the bull gets loose he massacres people in the stands. This oldest of Spanish sports, while artistically compelling, was more than a technical exercise for Goya; it contained rampant symbolism...
...Goya's works, the Proverbios or Disparities (nonsense), which were completed immediately following the Disasters of War, remain of special interest to admirers of the artist's work. Harrassed by royal authorities for the frankness of his earlier prints, he undertook these etchings, which he dedicated to the King, maintaining that they meant nothing at all. They seem to have been designed to go undeciphered until long after the artist's life. Recent interpretations conclude that these drawings contain the deepest of Goya's philosophy, in very exacting symbolism...