Witness to war crimes

El Tres de Mayo de 1808 en Madrid o Los fusilamientos en la montana del Principe Pio (The Third of May, 1808, or The Executions on Principe Pio Hill) by Francisco Goya, oil on canvas, 1814, on permanent display at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Click photo to enlarge.

Today I was re-reading excerpts of Robert Hughes' 2003 book Goya and was reminded of Goya's powerful war paintings at the Prado in Madrid. With his brushes, Goya painted the stories that today would have been captured in photographs. He eloquently showed his abhorrence for war in a series of paintings known as the Desastres de la Guerra (Disasters of War).

When the Peninsular War (1808-14) began, Goya was already 60 years old and "too deaf to hear a gunshot," as Hughes writes. "And yet, it is not too much to claim that his Desastres created a form of their own: that of vivid, camera-can't-lie pictorial journalism long before the invention of the camera, of art devoted to reportage, claiming its power." While Goya wasn't actually present at many of the events his paintings describe, he inscribed Yo lo vi - I saw it! - under a plate in which refugees from a country village are fleeing Napoleon's advancing army. Y'esto tambien - And this as well! - is the caption beneath another portrait of three exhausted women, weighed down by babies and household possessions, refugees of war.

"...Goya's ...martyr-of-the-people is one of the most vivid human presences in all art," Hughes writes. "In an age of unremitting war and cruelty, when the value of human life seems to be at the deepest discount in human history, when our culture is saturated with endless images of torment, brutality and death, he continues to haunt us. He is a 200-year-old equivalent of those few photo images that leaked out of Vietnam into long, emblematic life: the screaming naked girl running away from a napalm strike, toward the camera; the chinless police chief blowing out the brains of a plaid-shirted suspect at point-blank range with his kicking .38 on a Saigon street." And now, the photographic images from Southern Lebanon, from Beirut and from small towns in Israel.

So long before war photographers, Goya reported the news with his brushstrokes. While the medium has become more technology-oriented, the madness hasn't diminished since Goya's day, as evidenced in the bitter Israeli-Hezbollah fight with Lebanon as the battleground. Plus ca meme, plus ca meme chose, as the French say (The more things change, the more they remain the same).

Comments

[artzyjudie]

I have never followed the life and paintings of Goya more than the bit of studying the Old Masters that was required in school. I much prefer the beauty and riches of Italian Rennaissance paintings (I'm a dreamer),and the light portrayed in works of the Hudson River painters. However, Goya was very perceptive to have painted scenes such as this. His work is powerful and I should pay more attention to it. Imagine, it most likely took him weeks to paint one day's warring, and today we get hundreds of photos daily and immediate tv. How times have changed. Thank you for posting this most beautiful work. judie

[boliyou]

This may be the only painting by Goya that I recognize on sight. It's always struck me as a powerful piece, even more so today.

[Amber]

My little brother-in-law just graduated with a degree in Photojournalism. He talks of being in war-zones, working to tell the story... I am sad to think of how much opprtunity he will have to do this job.

:(

[AnnieElf]

This painting makes me think of that moment in the film "Eleni" when the mother, at the moment of her execution at the hands of Nazis (in Greece) shouted out "My Children!" For those of you who have not seen this powerful film, she died refusing to allow her children to be taken by the occupying forces to become "soldiers". The man in this painting may have been shouting "freedom" in defiance of his enemy. The fighting continues; the great sacrifices for an ideal continue. Both are powerful aspects of our human nature.

[Gemma]

Wow this painting is so dramatic with the light and dark contrasting values....and the subject makes it even more so...
Thank you for sharing this.

[ally bean]

I remember seeing this painting in the Prado when we visited Spain when I was a girl. It was very powerful and I was quite taken with how real the people looked in it.

Sad isn't it that his talent had to be used on war and not on some delightful peace painting.

[Colette]

So powerful. Painting or technology, the brutality continues through the centuries. I cannot believe people in power keep repeating the same mistakes. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, no?
For example, the French told the U.S. not to go into Viet Nam (they knew a thing or two!), but history was ignored, and look what happened.

XOXO