Goya’s Fight With Cudgels

Here is the painting.

As part of Goya’s black period, he seems to have been exasperated with his own lot as well as what he’d observed of the human condition.   The same fluid brushstroke style is there, the same dark tones (though the sky still seems a transcendent, slightly mystic blue and white) but the theme is dark….

Is this a painted over scene…the confused images of bitter old age and loss of memory that can come with it?   

Is it a faithful recording of the ignorance, fear and brutality he saw in Spain during his lifetime?

Here’s a quote from this excellent Goya page:

“Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels.”

“La fantasia abandonada de la razon, produce monstruos imposibles: unida con ella, es madre de las artes y origen de sus marabillas.”

But what was reason for Goya? 

See also: A previous Goya’s Colossus post.

John Williams: Asturias Leyenda

He’s got incredible technique.  The Moors (North African Arabs) conquered all but a small region of north-central Spain, and this song is in part about the origins (mythic) of more recent Catholic Spain. 

See also:  El Cid, The Reconquest, Isaac Albeniz, Andres Segovia

Goya’s Colossus

A dark vision.

Later in his life, Goya’s black paintings come from a man in a dark time, having lived through the peninsular wars, Spain’s continued decline, and illness and deafness.  He was still a man, though, who used his talent to the end.

There’s something transcendant about that figure, at first I thought it was just a man, standing honorably against our condition, ready to confront the unknown….. with fists clenched…

But then I saw the blank eyes, more like a man abstracted into a godlike force, into which human fear and ignorance can be projected.

Here is a link to a good Goya page.

Addition:  More here on the painting…and here on the dispute as to whether or not it’s his.

Joan Miro: Woman

         

          I was lucky enough to see this sculpture a few times at the Fundacio Miro in Barcelona.  At the time, I remember thinking “oh, it’s a comment on women in Spain”:  All legs and sensuality and yet these malformed, pitiful, faces rising (or barely perched) on top.  

“I know women like that…I remember thinking.  It’s better to be an object of male lust than nothing, kind of like prostitutes.   Spanish machismo and insularity, the triumph of cultural values no matter how arbitrary or foolish, and the native ignorance and poverty of the human lot can clearly produce women like this. Despite my idealism, this is what shall remain long after I’m dead.”  And then,  rather self-satisfied, I strolled away.

Now, as I look again, I realize I have no idea what this sculpture means.   Are those two faces?  Strange little breasts?  Is that a spigot on top?  A man’s head and woman’s head?  Aren’t they kind of gender neutral?  What was I thinking, anyways?

Something about Miro makes me think he has thought long, judged deeply, and yet the colors are joyful, and there’s just this playfulness and achieved simplicity in his work that invites you right in and never really puts you out.

Music in Spain: Conservative?

Here is an interesting piece on NPR about trends in Spanish music.

I’ve probably spent nearly a year in Spain, and one of the points reporter Chris Nickson makes is how conservative much popular Spanish music is.  In some ways, I would agree.

With Nickson, I’d say not all Spaniards go in for rock and roll and extremely rebellious music as we know it (I think this is comparing apples and oranges).   Pop music and rock is grafted onto them.

Against Nickson, if you want to see some pretty formal and pretty incredible flamenco playing, click here.  Why listen to pop when you’ve got that? 

Even deeper, check out Garcia-Lorca. 

To me, this is where the soul of Spanish art is.  This is how genius level artists deal with that conservativism, the times, and the moral certainty of their countrymen.  It’s raging inside of them and their work.

In fact, Spain raged into a Civil War for these and other reasons.

It’s more of a conversation Spain is having with itself, though as Nickson points out, pop and rock are a part of that conversation now, too.

A Good Spanish Poet: Antonio Machado

Antonio Machado has always been one of my favorites.  He’s a poet that embodies much of what Spain is, in my experience.  If you are taking a trip anytime soon, be sure and visit El Escorial, which, in part, is an enormous hunting palace.  

It can be a dry, lonely, land, where a clear-eyed melancholy and fortitude prevail.  Spain, of course, has deep stoic roots.  Here are a few lines that have stayed with me.

El ojo que ves no es
ojo porque tú lo veas;
es ojo porque te ve.

The eye you see is not
An eye because you see it
It’s an eye because it sees you.