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Francisco Goya

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Cam:
I was staring at the Goya painting and instead of being disturbed I thought, "Hey, it's time for lunch.  Let's get some Szechuan Chicken."  I think the internet may have broken me.

SevenPinkerton:
I feel bad because I kept trying to figure out what the thing was on his crotch.

Either way, very disturbing picture. His stuff reminds me of some of my favorite Bosch paintings.

Johnny C:
The work of Francis Bacon is by and large the most disturbing art I've ever come across. His studies of Pope Innocent X are harrowing beyond belief.

I suppose I ought to comment on Goya though. His ability to capture the horrors people perpetrate on themselves was remarkable - look at The Third Of May or the muted, inhuman tones of The Inquisition Tribunal. It would be shallow to suggest, though, that all of his work is grim and bleak. Paul Richardson of The Washington Post said it best:


--- Quote ---Goya's pictures show us reassuring beauty--and beauty's scary opposite. Few women in the history of European painting are as lovely as the young Dona Antonia Zarate, whom Goya portrayed graciously in 1805-06. She is proud, demure, intelligent. That swiftly painted wonder of golden silk and healthy skin, black hair, black eyes, black lace, hymns the thought of womanhood--which Goya's "The Old Women (Time)," c. 1808-12, savagely insults. Two hags share a looking glass. They are among the ugliest in European art. The bejeweled blonde is toothless; her eyes are rheumy red. The brunette who sits beside her has been depicted just as cruelly. Some hideous disease, syphilis perhaps, has eaten at her nose. ("Que tal?"--"What's up?"--is the question inscribed on the mirror; are we supposed to laugh?) The figure of gray, winged Death looms behind the women. Instead of a scythe, he lifts aloft a broom, for that is all that's needed to sweep such withered lives away.
--- End quote ---

The two extremes of his work - quiet, contemplative human innocence and overwhelming monstrosity - create such a wonderful thematic strain in his work. Is more humanity revealed in the acts of violence, or the periods of rest and joy between them?

Lines:

--- Quote from: OrigNES on 14 Jan 2008, 11:59 ---I've always like Goya's work aswell as Francis Bacon's Figure with Meat

--- End quote ---

I hadn't seen that painting before, but wow that's awesome.

I enjoy Goya's work. Well, not enjoy, as a lot of it can be grotesque, but I think he's an admirable painter and his work has a large impact on his viewers.

De_El:
I always thought of Francis Bacon as a famous occultist before I knew he was a painter, and then when I saw Figure with Meat I thought it was fucking boss. Then again, I listened to Marilyn Manson as a child. I retain a fancy for pseudo-...actually how would you describe this? Demonic? Maybe just haunting? It is spooky, that's for sure.

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