December 15, 2010
Taft Museum showing full set of Los Caprichos through January 2011
The Taft is the home for the Goya oil portrait of Queen Maria Luisa. Until the end of January they are offering on view a full set of Caprichos prints, along with guided lectures.
[Below] From the Taft Museum press release:
"... Los Caprichos by Francisco Goya took an insightful yet darkly humorous view of contemporary Spanish society. From blasting provincial superstition to criticizing political corruption, this set of etchings confirms Goya’s liberalism and demonstrates the artist’s revulsion at intellectual oppression imposed by political and religious leaders.
The full set of 18th-century Spanish artist Francisco Goya’s 80 haunting images from Los Caprichos (“The Whims” or “The Fantasies,” published in 1799) confronts human hypocrisy, pretense, fear, and irrationality, picturing them in every conceivable form. Information about the artworks and the artist in the gallery during this exhibition will be available in English and Spanish. This is the first time the Taft is offering bilingual labels for an exhibition.
Goya’s singularly original visions of monsters, specters, corpses, and other bitter or callous beings enact challenges to authority of all kinds, including that of the church and state, with great precision and detail.
“I think visitors will find the images in Los Caprichos, though created at the end of the 1700s, incredibly relevant to our current state of the world,” says Deborah Scott, director/CEO of the Taft Museum of Art. “ Goya created these controversial works in a time of economic crisis in Spain. He also articulated his Enlightenment ideals through his work, questioning the church, politicians, and other figures of authority.”
“We also saw with Los Caprichos an opportunity to reach out to Cincinnati’s growing Hispanic community,” says Scott. Labels and wall text in the gallery will be in both English and Spanish in an effort to make the Taft’s special exhibitions more accessible to non-native English speakers.
...The etchings on view are from an early first edition, one of four sets acquired directly from Goya, and belong now to an American private collector. The exhibition is organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, California, in association with Denenberg Fine Arts, West Hollywood, California.
...The Taft Museum of Art owns an important oil portrait by Goya, Queen Maria Luisa of Spain, of about 1800."
Read the complete press release for the exhibit at the Taft Museum online here.
Francisco Goya: Los Caprichos: a time of economic crisis, war and political corruption
December 4, 2010 - January 30, 2011
The Taft Museum
316 Pike Street
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
(513) 241-0343
The Taft Museum of Art is open Wednesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
The Taft is closed Mondays and Tuesdays, New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day.
Admission fees:
Adults $8
Seniors 60 and over $6
Students over 18 $6
Children 18 and underenter free
No admission fees on Sundays.
AMAZON
Goya The Terrible Sublime - Graphic Novel - (Spanish Edition) - Amazon
"From this headlong seizure of life we should not expect a calm and refined art, nor a reflective one. Yet Goya was more than a Nietzschean egoist riding roughshod over the world to assert his supermanhood. He was receptive to all shades of feeling, and it was his extreme sensitivity as well as his muscular temerity that actuated his assaults on the outrageous society of Spain." From Thomas Craven's essay on Goya from MEN OF ART (1931).
"...Loneliness has its limits, for Goya was not a prophet but a painter. If he had not been a painter his attitude to life would have found expression only in preaching or suicide." From Andre Malroux's essay in SATURN: AN ESSAY ON GOYA (1957).
"Goya is always a great artist, often a frightening one...light and shade play upon atrocious horrors." From Charles Baudelaire's essay on Goya from CURIOSITES ESTRANGERS (1842).
"[An] extraordinary mingling of hatred and compassion, despair and sardonic humour, realism and fantasy." From the foreword by Aldous Huxley to THE COMPLETE ETCHINGS OF GOYA (1962).
"His analysis in paint, chalk and ink of mass disaster and human frailty pointed to someone obsessed with the chaos of existence..." From the book on Goya by Sarah Symmons (1998).
"I cannot forgive you for admiring Goya...I find nothing in the least pleasing about his paintings or his etchings..." From a letter to (spanish) Duchess Colonna from the French writer Prosper Merimee (1869).
GOYA : Los Caprichos - Dover Edition - Amazon
