At the twilight of the 18th century, his hearing gone, his body partially paralyzed, his soul consumed with the fear of going blind, Francisco de Goya gave society a piece of his mind.
Anyone who had been paying attention could not have been shocked by the bitter, incriminating bite Goya took of the hand that fed him. The first court painter to faithfully depict the dissipated, fatuous members of Spain's royal family, Goya was known for his acid acuity. But in "Los Caprichos," his pitiless disgust of artifice took a hideous [--] and surprisingly misogynistic [--] turn.
"Los Caprichos" is one of the two lynchpins in "Caprice and Corruption: 18th Century Prints," now on view at Wesleyan University's Davison Art Center collection. The other is the reliably censorious William Hogarth, whose "Harlot's Progress" is on view in its entirety.
Goya was appointed royal painter in 1799, the same year Los Caprichos was printed. In many ways he is the heir to Hogarth [--] whose "modern moral subjects" spared no one. Goya, the more ingenious artist, was more ghoulish in his satire, but he was also more certain where much of the blame for the artifice, hypocrisy and moral corrosion lay [--] with women.
His women are fox-faced, cunning, sorceresses who beguile their way into marriage and eat the flesh of infants. Women ride naked on broomstick, twist thread from infant tissue and exchange the edible flesh of crying infants. Ostensibly, greed and moral depravity was Goya's subject, but his treatment of women [--] as mischievous crones or lusty gold-diggers, puts the blame, so to speak, on Mame.
In part, Goya's images of women stealing the teeth out of the mouths of hanged men or inviting monsters into the nursery were his way of attacking the superstition and ignorance that thwarted reason. But so hauntingly appalling are these women [--] whether as artful nymphs who "Say 'Yes' and Give their Hand to the First Comer" or fiendish hags feasting on the flesh of the next generation [--] that it's hard to see them as anything but deeply misogynistic. As Anna Szapiro writes of the series, "Women have been transformed to grotesque humanoid creatures, merciless witches and crones capable of exploiting even their most innocent victims: the vulnerable, impressionable youth."
"Los Caprichos" was hardly Goya's final indictment on a world that had let him down. He would end his days in 1828 in Bordeaux, embittered by the artifice, cruelty and oppression he had endured in Spain. His "black paintings" became his last word on mankind's corrosive tendency to devour its own. By the end of the 18th century, the world had let many Europeans down, particularly intellectuals like Goya, who had put his money on Enlightenment ideals only to see them cut down by the guillotine and crushed under the Napoleonic Empire. Prints, a medium of largely private enjoyment, were a method of indulging one's bitter disappointments and vulgar appetites. And there is plenty of vulgarity to go around in "Caprice & Corruption." Ministers stick religious idols down women's bodices; satyrs frolic behind buxom women in forests teeming with carnality; wives pat their husbands with one hand and embrace their lovers with another. It is these sorts of paeans to debauchery that helpfully remind us that the 20th century was not the first to discover sex. Carnality was so rife for so long that novels about strait-laced virgins, like Richardson's "Pamela," were shocking in their heroine's embrace of chastity.
Capriccio, literally "caprice," had been around since the time of Alessandro Magnasco (1667-1749), but in the 18th century, the genre took a more astringent tone. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, for instance, known for his exceptional architectural vedute<$>, reminded patrons that the glory that was Rome was not produced without an exceptional amount of gore.
His "Prisons," published in 1760, combine the monumentality of Roman architecture with the grisly torture that he imagined went on in the subterranean chambers that held prisoners. Haunting, evocative prints, like "The Man on the Rack," "Prisoners on a Projecting Platform" and "The Well" depict prisoners being rent limb-from-torso, tethered to phallic pillars with thick, menacing chains.
Piranesi's etchings are considered Romantic, but in the flickering, webbed shadows, he seems to presage Expressionism. The contrast between the monumental idealism of Rome, suggested by the breathtaking architecture, and the underside of empire, represented by the squalid prisons, would have had deep contemporary overtones in 18th-century Europe.
William Hogarth's brilliance was that he didn't need to go to Europe or even hearken to the past to create his "modern moral subjects." Right there in all-too-jolly old England were enough drunks, whores, rakes, fakes and exploiters to make all the points he wanted. His memorable tale of corruption, "The Harlot's Progress," (1732), depicts "Moll Hackabout" from her arrival in London as an innocent maid, to her position as kept woman, poverty, sentence in the work house, and miserable death <$>is dense with contemporary characters and allusions. Hogarth's satire knew no bounds; he attacked everyone from politicians to preachers, expectant mothers and cuckolded husbands. Among his most revealing and least-seen pieces is "Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism" (1762), in which a sputtering preacher (probably John Wesley), holds a devil in one hand and a witch in the other while lascivious ministers and bored congregants cavort below.
So unsparing is Hogarth in his condemnation of humanity, that even death offers no respite. In "The Reward of Cruelty" (1751), Hogarth depicts a corpse being dissected by leering scientists. The inscription below gives a fair idea of Hogarth's view of the victim. "Torn from the root that wicked tongue/which daily swore and curst!/Those eyeballs from their sockets wrung/ that glowed with shameful Lust!"
Phony marriages, prostitution, superstition and widespread corruption were all vestiges of an ignorant age thought to be remedied by the wonders of the Enlightenment. If "Caprice & Corruption" reminds us of anything it is the foolhardiness of that belief [--] a folly that burdens us still.
"Caprice and Corruption" was organized by Wesleyan University students in Art & Art History 360. It continues through March 3.
Anyone who had been paying attention could not have been shocked by the bitter, incriminating bite Goya took of the hand that fed him. The first court painter to faithfully depict the dissipated, fatuous members of Spain's royal family, Goya was known for his acid acuity. But in "Los Caprichos," his pitiless disgust of artifice took a hideous [--] and surprisingly misogynistic [--] turn.
"Los Caprichos" is one of the two lynchpins in "Caprice and Corruption: 18th Century Prints," now on view at Wesleyan University's Davison Art Center collection. The other is the reliably censorious William Hogarth, whose "Harlot's Progress" is on view in its entirety.
Goya was appointed royal painter in 1799, the same year Los Caprichos was printed. In many ways he is the heir to Hogarth [--] whose "modern moral subjects" spared no one. Goya, the more ingenious artist, was more ghoulish in his satire, but he was also more certain where much of the blame for the artifice, hypocrisy and moral corrosion lay [--] with women.
His women are fox-faced, cunning, sorceresses who beguile their way into marriage and eat the flesh of infants. Women ride naked on broomstick, twist thread from infant tissue and exchange the edible flesh of crying infants. Ostensibly, greed and moral depravity was Goya's subject, but his treatment of women [--] as mischievous crones or lusty gold-diggers, puts the blame, so to speak, on Mame.
In part, Goya's images of women stealing the teeth out of the mouths of hanged men or inviting monsters into the nursery were his way of attacking the superstition and ignorance that thwarted reason. But so hauntingly appalling are these women [--] whether as artful nymphs who "Say 'Yes' and Give their Hand to the First Comer" or fiendish hags feasting on the flesh of the next generation [--] that it's hard to see them as anything but deeply misogynistic. As Anna Szapiro writes of the series, "Women have been transformed to grotesque humanoid creatures, merciless witches and crones capable of exploiting even their most innocent victims: the vulnerable, impressionable youth."
"Los Caprichos" was hardly Goya's final indictment on a world that had let him down. He would end his days in 1828 in Bordeaux, embittered by the artifice, cruelty and oppression he had endured in Spain. His "black paintings" became his last word on mankind's corrosive tendency to devour its own. By the end of the 18th century, the world had let many Europeans down, particularly intellectuals like Goya, who had put his money on Enlightenment ideals only to see them cut down by the guillotine and crushed under the Napoleonic Empire. Prints, a medium of largely private enjoyment, were a method of indulging one's bitter disappointments and vulgar appetites. And there is plenty of vulgarity to go around in "Caprice & Corruption." Ministers stick religious idols down women's bodices; satyrs frolic behind buxom women in forests teeming with carnality; wives pat their husbands with one hand and embrace their lovers with another. It is these sorts of paeans to debauchery that helpfully remind us that the 20th century was not the first to discover sex. Carnality was so rife for so long that novels about strait-laced virgins, like Richardson's "Pamela," were shocking in their heroine's embrace of chastity.
Capriccio, literally "caprice," had been around since the time of Alessandro Magnasco (1667-1749), but in the 18th century, the genre took a more astringent tone. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, for instance, known for his exceptional architectural vedute<$>, reminded patrons that the glory that was Rome was not produced without an exceptional amount of gore.
His "Prisons," published in 1760, combine the monumentality of Roman architecture with the grisly torture that he imagined went on in the subterranean chambers that held prisoners. Haunting, evocative prints, like "The Man on the Rack," "Prisoners on a Projecting Platform" and "The Well" depict prisoners being rent limb-from-torso, tethered to phallic pillars with thick, menacing chains.
Piranesi's etchings are considered Romantic, but in the flickering, webbed shadows, he seems to presage Expressionism. The contrast between the monumental idealism of Rome, suggested by the breathtaking architecture, and the underside of empire, represented by the squalid prisons, would have had deep contemporary overtones in 18th-century Europe.
William Hogarth's brilliance was that he didn't need to go to Europe or even hearken to the past to create his "modern moral subjects." Right there in all-too-jolly old England were enough drunks, whores, rakes, fakes and exploiters to make all the points he wanted. His memorable tale of corruption, "The Harlot's Progress," (1732), depicts "Moll Hackabout" from her arrival in London as an innocent maid, to her position as kept woman, poverty, sentence in the work house, and miserable death <$>is dense with contemporary characters and allusions. Hogarth's satire knew no bounds; he attacked everyone from politicians to preachers, expectant mothers and cuckolded husbands. Among his most revealing and least-seen pieces is "Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism" (1762), in which a sputtering preacher (probably John Wesley), holds a devil in one hand and a witch in the other while lascivious ministers and bored congregants cavort below.
So unsparing is Hogarth in his condemnation of humanity, that even death offers no respite. In "The Reward of Cruelty" (1751), Hogarth depicts a corpse being dissected by leering scientists. The inscription below gives a fair idea of Hogarth's view of the victim. "Torn from the root that wicked tongue/which daily swore and curst!/Those eyeballs from their sockets wrung/ that glowed with shameful Lust!"
Phony marriages, prostitution, superstition and widespread corruption were all vestiges of an ignorant age thought to be remedied by the wonders of the Enlightenment. If "Caprice & Corruption" reminds us of anything it is the foolhardiness of that belief [--] a folly that burdens us still.
"Caprice and Corruption" was organized by Wesleyan University students in Art & Art History 360. It continues through March 3.
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