Showing posts with label francisco goya. Show all posts
Showing posts with label francisco goya. Show all posts

8 Oct 2018

On Goya's Red Boy

Goya: Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zúñiga (1787-88)
Commonly referred to as Goya's Red Boy


Commissioned by an aristocratic banker to produce a series of family portraits, including one of his youngest son, Manuel, Goya produced one of the most charming - if creepiest - pictures in modern art. 

The whey-faced child is dressed in a rather splendid red outfit. In his right hand, he holds a string attached to his pet magpie; the bird has Goya's calling card in its beak and is watched intently by three wide-eyed cats. On Manuel's left, sits a cage full of finches.

Whilst portraits of children and animals have a long and popular history in Spanish art, Goya seems to pervert this tradition by using the beasts to add an element of menace rather than delight to the work. To suggest, for example, that even the innocent world of childhood contains cruelty and is threatened by the forces of evil: Manuel, sadly, would die a few short years later, aged eight. 

His death is surely coincidental; child mortality was simply a fact of life in 18th century Europe (Goya saw only one of his own children reach adulthood). But there's something uncanny in this work which seems to anticipate such a fate. Little Manuel, despite his finery and the presence of his animal companions, looks like a lost soul.  

Still, he's achieved a level of fame and immortality far beyond that of his siblings who survived him; even Andy Warhol would one day sit at his feet. 


Notes 

Readers interested in viewing the Red Boy can find the work displayed at The Met Fifth Avenue (Gallery 633). 

For a fascinating essay on the painting and its extraordinary popularity, see Reva Wolf, 'Goya's "Red Boy": The Making of a Celebrity': click here to read online. 

See also The Andy Warhol Diaries, ed. Pat Hackett, (Penguin Books, 2010). In the entry dated Friday, December 31, 1976, Warhol writes about a party at Kitty Miller's apartment: "And after dinner, I sat underneath Goya's 'Red Boy'. Kitty has this most famous painting right there in her house, it's unbelievable."    


12 Mar 2016

Luis Quiles and the Transparency of Evil

Louis Quiles: self portrait and Twitter profile picture


The work of Spanish artist Luis Quiles brilliantly reveals what Baudrillard describes as evil.

That is to say, that which belongs to the order not of morality, but of invisibility; that which is usually concealed and circulates in secret; that which, despite the best efforts of our society to deny its existence, eventually shines through (thus Baudrillard's notion of the transpiring of evil).

We like to think that our idealism has triumphed in a world unified by technology and illuminated by the light of reason; that the good, the true, and the beautiful are now the supreme values and we should therefore all be wearing a permanently happy face.

Un/fortunately, however, evil remains within our society and, indeed, it continues to provide the indispensable energy needed to drive it forward. 18th-century Anglo-Dutch philosopher and political economist, Bernard Mandeville, was right when he asserted, scandalously at the time, that society operates and advances on the basis of its vices, not its virtues or positive qualities.

Quiles, I think, recognizes this - recognizes, that is to say, that corruption has a vital function within the world - even if, as a liberal humanist, he finds it difficult to countenance greed, violence, exploitation, and hatred. Thus the terrible tension and ambiguity within his images. They clearly satirize the pornographic character of contemporary culture and consumer capitalism, yet nevertheless they are complicit with it.




A friend of mine compared the images to those of English graffiti-artist Banksy. But, at their best, the comic-book style pictures by this young, Barcelona-based artist are almost as unbearable to look at - their content as profoundly troubling - as the so-called Black Paintings produced by Goya during the final period of his life. They're that good; they're that appalling.


Note: the above picture, as well as many other works, can be found on Luis Quiles's Facebook page by clicking here.