calendario eventi  :: 

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1/6/2005

Two exhibitions

Chelsea Art Museum, New York

Los Caprichos and Here comes the Bogey-Man

Curated by Elga Wimmer

Francisco de Goya’s etching and aquatint series “Los Caprichos” (published in 1799) is a view of both man’s power of spiritual creation and the failings of his own nature. And it is this insight into the reality of man which makes it possible for Goya to depict the human figure as beautiful and at the same time to caricature it. Such a composition of socio/political satire, no doubt, was enlightening to the eighteenth-century rationalist, so confident about his ability to comprehend both man’s capabilities and limitations. Goya wanted to express, not represent. The plate by Goya entitled “The Sleep of Reason produces Monsters” (first intended as title for the whole series of “Los Caprichos”) reads: “Imagination, deserted by reason, begets impossible monsters. United with reason, she is the mother of all arts, and the source of their wonders.” (“Goya’s Caprichos” by José Lopez-Rey - Beauty, Reason & Caricature Vol.1, 1953 Princeton University Press). In “Here Comes the Bogey-Man” (“Que viene el Coco”) Goya refers to the “Black Man” that children fear more than their own father as a symbol of the blind belief in authority ruling the naive and influenceable commoner. Needless to say, we have quite a few of those “black and fearful ghosts” in our culture, ever-present to create panic and fear – the consequence as in Goya’s time of superstition and poor education.

In an essay for the exhibition “Drawings by Goya” at the Prado in 1947, Andre Malraux wrote: “Goya discovers his genius the day that he dares to stop to please. He substitutes seduction with revelation and discovers the vulnerability of the spectator, the weakness of a culture put in question face to face with the artist that proclaims his truth. Goya created a desperate and solitary art – the beginning of modern painting.”

The artists in “Here Comes the Bogey-Man” pay tribute to Goya and carry his spirit, evoking global issues, into the 21st century: In direct appropriation from “Los Caprichos” by Yasumasa Morimura and Conrad Atkinson. In a mythological way, in the work of Rona Pondick, Ray Smith and Kimiko Yoshida. In socio/political satire with Saint Clair Cemin, Carlos de los Rios and Yun-Fei Ji. In symbolic picturings of the “dark side” by Madeleine Hatz and Fabian Marcaccio (Goya said “there is only black and white in nature.”) In a pun on religious issues by Masami Teraoka. There was rarely a time more appropriate to rethink the relationship of the artist and his society than Goya’s era and our own. The novelist Emilia Pardo Bazan wrote in 1906 in an article published in La Lectura: “The history of Goya’s thought and the progressive development of moral, social, philosophical and political ideas in his work is probably more interesting than his novelistic life.” In the work of Rona Pondick and Kimiko Yoshida there is an expressive, abnormal and violent ugliness like that in “Los Caprichos”: Romantic Ugliness. As in Goya’s time, our daily news reports monstrosity, insanity, brutality, violent madness, perversity, and torture, all influencing and coloring the work of the artists in “Here Comes the Bogey-Man.” Only momentarily do we find a ray of hope in Goya’s “Los Caprichos” as well as in the work of these contemporary artists: and it is a dawn of intellectual and emotional hope.

The Gabarron Foundation is supporting this exhibition, creating awareness of the importance of art, culture and science in the world of today. With the support of the Cultural Department of the Consulate General of Spain in New York. With the support of Instituto Cervantes in New York.

Opening reception June 2, 6 – 8pm

Press preview June 2, 4 – 6pm

Chelsea Art Museum
556 West 22nd Street - New York

stampa

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