Throughout the existence of Spain, turmoil, violence, oppression and eventual revolution overturned the country numerous times. Many outsiders experienced this disorder firsthand. Writing heavyweights George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway spent a considerable amount of time in war torn Spain and wrote different books about their experiences in the "foreign" country where they witnessed such atrocities toward man, child and woman. Their accounts were renowned from scholars to students who wished to learn more about the mysterious and violent Spain that rumbled so far away from their safe, civil homeland. Some visionaries and artists during this time couldn't simply run into the war zone then scurry back home to report. Francisco Goya is one of these artists. Considered as both one of the greatest technically proficient and ingeniously creative artists of all time, Goya's artistic ability undoubtedly spawned from the aggressive atmosphere in which he was raised. Goya channeled his ability into subtly comments on a Spain that he felt was embarrassing and socially unbalanced. Francisco Goya used his artwork to reflect his resentment towards the current crooked culture in Spain, specifically through his use of sex, raw human depravity and surrealist horror.
Goya's notion and ideals about sex flourished through his artwork. Although many of his paintings featured sex in a roundabout and discreet way, his most notable painting dealing with sex, or more properly titled series of paintings, was a two-pronged piece dealing with sexuality aptly titled, The Clothed Maja and The Nude Maja. Breaking the painting down to its purest elements, The Clothed Maja, shows a beautiful young woman lounging on a chair, clearly posing for Goya in a full dress. Oppositely and quite hilariously, The Nude Maja, is nearly the exact same picture except the aforementioned young woman is posing naked, exposing every part of her body, probably also just for Goya. Daniel Marx and Emil Kren, creators and editors of the fully accessible (and quite renowned) art database simply titled, The Web Gallery of Art, explain that a "maja" is a "fashionable young woman" (Marx). Painted from 1799 to 1800, Goya knew exactly what kind of staunch Christian audience would see this painting and he knew it would anger them that he found a beautiful and voluptuous woman to pose in the nude. The fact that a young woman posing for a controversial artist would obviously raises some eyebrows and fists during the time period where Spain was just readying itself for the War of the Oranges with Portugal. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, The War of Oranges was fought between Portugal and the allied coalition of Spain and France (War of the Oranges). Spain and France were victorious and France used its partnership with Spain to engage in the Peninsular War. In the Peninsular War many sources believe that France, more appropriately warlord Napoleon Bonaparte, tricked Spain into moving its armies through the nation to gain more advantageous military positioning for France (The Peninsular War). Napoleon exploited the bond solidified by the countries after their joint victory in the War of the Oranges. France's sneaky and serpentine treachery perceptibly put a strain on the relationship between the two nations.
Then, France's shocking renegade author Marques De Sade released a book in 1800 called, "Crimes of Love", which was De Sade's most notorious and complete smattering of stories entailing depraved and often violent stories of sexual fantasies-it was De Sade's response to the "excess he saw in the French Revolution" (The Marquis de Sade). Goya's Maja series was widely discussed especially when the public discovered that the painting was of the Duchess of Alba and a duchess is a title of royalty (Marx). Even thinking that Goya and De Sade shared a similar passion in different mediums for the naked flesh of young royalty during a time of cynicism toward France must have sparked an intense uproar in the Spanish community. Especially because Goya's painting represented such irreverence towards the body by clothing it and unclothing it in a simple and almost comedic two-picture mechanism. Disgusting as De Sade? No. As provocative as social commentary through sex? Yes. According to Marx, Goya intended the piece to have "no pretence of being anything but the rendering of a naked woman lying on a couch" (Marx). This painting nearly insults the visage of the prudish royalty because Goya clearly saw this woman naked and she probably enjoyed it. Goya continued his attack art commentary on Spain with his startling depictions of humanity at its worst.
Francisco Goya pressed his luck with his controversial art when he released his astonishingly deep yet stark, "Los Caprichos" series and his ode to communicable widespread city illness, "The Desastres". "Los Caprichos", includes a picture of a horrified yet intrigued woman pulling the teeth out of a recently executed hanged man (Sayre 75). In the analysis of the picture, author Eleanor Sayre explains that, "Goya often satirized the ability of love to drive a parson to idiotic lengths" (Sayre 75). Sayre blatantly makes note that Goya's work is one of satire, which by definition implies that his art is meant to comment and scathe a social institution; in this case, the institution is love or relationships in Spain. Clearly this type of body ravaging was commonplace in Spain because Goya felt the need to expose this type of behavior that he probably believed was guttural judging by the gritty hyper-reality of this etching. Sayre also quotes another Goya aficionado, F.J. Sanchez-Canton, who describes how the teeth of the recently deceased were "considered useful ingredients as love potions" (Sayre 75). Goya etches the woman with such fear in her face, yet such necessity in her hands. She does not want to take the teeth, but must, either for herself or another party. The audience does not know whether or not the two in the etching were ever romantically involved and she's trying to remove her lover's teeth because she's afraid of the black magic that might be woven if the wrong party were to pluck them or if she's simply a molar snatching witch trying to control her own romantic misfortunes through dark ritual. Either way, Goya's intent was to comment on an occurring practice that he felt was unnecessary in Spain.
Goya's "The Desastres", comments on gross and inconsiderate human nature during the time of widespread illness. In 1809, when typhus fever destroyed the town of Zaragoza, Goya captured the ghastly event with an inspired etching (Sayre 145). This particular piece of art shows a man literally vomiting his guts out over a pile of disheveled, freshly dead corpses strewn across each other in a strange clump of twisted clothing and limbs (depicted in Sayre 145). Goya's choices in this painting were clear: he wanted to portray this disaster in a way were humans were both victim and predator. Humans were at fault because the reason the epidemic reached such deadly heights was because the town was besieged (Sayre 145). In reverse, the etching shows the sickly and decrepit nature of humans when their humanity is whittled down to that of an animal. When they die in clusters in the middle of the street like poisoned rats. When they stagger and stammer on weak knees with lungs full of blood and a stomach sloshing with bile. When they puke their innards into a mound of rotting flesh then join the heap by falling into it, face first and dead before they hit the ground. Goya portrays the extreme insensitivity that humans had towards one another in 1800s Spain even in times of despair and inevitable death. Goya's views on the human condition in Spain are further bolstered by his pieces that take the audience out of reality and plunge them into a surreal world of torment.
Francisco Goya's "Disparates" collection took his social commentary on a twisted Spain to whole other plane of existence that descended right through reality and reached the pits of hell. In the etching, Disparate de miedo (Disparate of fear), Goya carves a giant ragged ghost striking terror into the hearts of a platoon of soldiers upon further inspection to reveal that the phantom is a tree and soldiers' imaginations have gone haywire (depicted in Holo 8-9). Goya draws the spectre like a clothed grim reaper beckoning to the soldiers to face their death: as they lived by the sword, so they shall die by the sword. One soldier flees in panic as the others kneel helplessly on the ground, paralyzed by fear. During this period of time in Spain, violence and a virulently military tone saturated the nation to the point where Goya felt that the only fear the empowered soldiers must have felt was fear itself because of their status in society as a constant warrior who's gun fired with more persuasion than spoken truth. Holo states that Goya was "fascinated by fear, its causes and effects on human beings" (Holo 9). The gigantic embodiment of death turning out to be a tree must symbolize the irrational fear that the soldiers face in the darkest battlefield of all: their minds- a war zone where there's no possible victory or defeat and surrender means death.
Goya's second savagely surreal disparate was called Disparate de bobo or Disparate of the fool. In this piece, also etched on a plate, Goya creates a giant bald baby-like man with two heads growing out of its tree trunk-like legs scaring a trembling man who desperately tries to wish the vision away by throwing a blanket over his head (depicted in Holo 10). The audience is never sure whether Goya intends the "fool" of this piece to be the man, who could possibly be confronting his own insecurities in the form of this large ogre or more literally, the three headed man-beast himself could be a surrealist character spawned by the flawed pride of Spain here to haunt its children for acting with such false bravado. Holo speculates that Goya originally intended for the trembling man to be a Catholic priest and this etching specifically attacking the clergy (Holo 10). In the final finished product, it is impossible to tell if the man is that of the cloth because he is wrapped in a bed sheet and under said sheet, he is naked. If this piece were made to damage the Catholic church, it was also slice the heart of Spanish society which is a culture that's renown for such strict religious tradition that it borders on fanaticism. The depiction could also describe the duality of the shaking confidence of man, that of which sometimes lumbers like a giant yet screams and splits into two pathetic heads of insecurity. Both feelings are very real but also very intangible for the weak human mind to grasp. One again, Goya pokes and prods at the human condition by personifying a fear that most Spaniards barely even realized existed inside of them.
Unfortunately, many of Francisco Goya's collections of artwork were not published or released until years after his death. Holo even states in her introduction that "Los Disparates" wasn't published until thirty-six years after Goya's death (Holo 5). Goya's artistic social commentary wasn't absorbed with the immediacy and efficiency that he would have desired because the public barely saw his most horrific, hence most prolific, pieces. He worked best preying up common human fears and emotions and realized that his cute and funny taboo paintings like The Nude Maja, paled in comparison in sending his message to some of his more extreme work like the Disparates series. Goya managed to work outside the closed minds that ran society, catapulting his commentary to a metaphysical level all while staying deeply rooted in their shared problems. His harsh depictions of true life showed the worst so Spain could change for the better.
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