On the 3rd of December Adam (a fellow student) and I took the train to London to see Goya’s set of proofs at the British Museum. When we got to the Museum we had instructions to ring the door bell behind the Michelangelo cartoon in Gallery 90, which seemed very mysterious. We were buzzed into an anteroom, part of the museum which is only accessible by appointment, where we were asked to lock away drinks and pens prior to gaining access to the study room.

The museum assistant made it quite clear how careful we had to be, impressing upon us the importance of the works, and reminding us of the permissions which had been sort on our behalf enabling us to see Goya’s album.

This is the only known set which Goya printed and handed to his friend, the dealer Ceán Bermúdez who Goya had tasked with editing the captions. The prints never got editioned in Goya’s lifetime, and Bermúdez’s daughter presented these to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando after her father’s death in 1862. The plates which the Academy had received via Goya’s son, Javier (found whilst clearing his fathers house sometime after the artists death) were updated with Bermúdez’s captions and finally printed 35 years after Goya’s death. The Disasters of War, Goya’s critique of inhumanity during conflict was fittingly first published during the year of the inaugural Red Cross Geneva Convention, which was ratified a year later in 1864.

It was amazing to handle the prints (gloves were not required as they reduced dexterity and could actually result in harm coming to the artwork) the detail one could see by tilting the prints and getting close up enabled us to analyse the work and in some cases review earlier interpretations of certain images. The delicate binding of the album was interesting to me, I also noticed the repair work to some of the prints (pieces of tape and glued paper). This made me curious as to whether the Chapman brothers had been to the Museum too, as they had shown a similar piece of sellotape in one of their prints analysing Goya’s set.

The Chapmans’ prints (from 1999 which the museum also made available to us) were quite a contrast, they seemed to capture Goya’s intent from a modern perspective. The brothers have parodied Goya’s hard hitting prints in many ways, during 1999 they made a set of 83 plates which they printed on various papers, overpainted  and later overprinted (see My Giant Colouring Book (2004)). The order seemed to be unimportant, both to the Museum (who I asked, and was told not to worry about the sequence, just ensure that the tissue paper protected the image) and to the Chapmans’ whose website shows the sets in various, seemingly random arrangements. In the prints the Chapmans align Goya’s imagery with earlier works of their own, they also seem to analyse Goya’s prints from behind and close-up. Another means of interpretation the brothers use involves simplification, redrawing of familiar images using a naive, child-like style embellished with meaning, such as eyeballs in the tree witnessing atrocities, soldiers who seem to be wearing ‘deely boppers’ wired into their brains, transmitting some messed up thoughts, whilst others soldiers are literally subjected to x-ray scrutiny.

My gratitude goes to the British Museum and their kind staff for their assistance in this study. This was a great experience which I’d heartily recommend if you have the opportunity.


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Today UK politicians are debating the prospect of sending airstrikes into Syria to bomb Daesh (AKA I.S., AKA Isis, AKA Isil). I heard arguments describing children witnessing severed heads in the streets of Raqqa (the Syrian headquarters of Daesh), the risk of British bombs harming civilians, damage to buildings and the instability and insecurity action might cause versus the same argument made by others should we do nothing.

As part of my dissertation research tomorrow I’m going to the British Museum to handle Goya’s The Disasters of War proofs, his anti-war manifesto depicting the inhumanity of man during Napoleon’s invasion of Spain two hundred years ago.

During the Spanish Civil war (1937) the republican government used Goya’s series of prints as propaganda against the fascists sending bespoke copies to Stalin and Eleanor Roosevelt in a hope that they might bolster support; but they did not.

In 2012 an exhibition in Beirut of Goya’s The Disasters of War was used to highlight the inequity of war and promote the notion of an ongoing immorality. In the meantime the media are streaming images & articles into our homes and on to our mobile phones.

Goya’s art remains relevant but why? Unlike my grandparents I have no experience of war. Whilst US movies dramatise, and glamorise war, and the media cannot be too graphic incase they offend people watching whilst they eat their tea. We are left with artist dealing with the most challenging art. Goya’s prints and paintings demonstrating acts of war remain as relevant today as Picasso’s Guernica. Goya captures the immorality without embellishment. Whilst the Taliban & Daesh blow up art history in Syria and Iraq we turn to art for answers.

Recently I created a painting which considered war and loss, it’s called Repatriated. It’s inspired by Jasper Johns Flag (1954-55) which I was lucky enough to see at the MoMA last month, I used encaustic wax paint, a non-toxic recipe I developed with some trial and error. Like Johns, I too added newspaper print behind the paint, although it’s uncertain why Johns’ did so, I used it to provide more texture, and to hide articles within it relating to the conflict, I also included a copy of the role call, a list of the UK servicemen and women who lost their lives in the Afghanistan conflict. The shape of the flag is cropped, to appear like a flag draped over a soldier’s coffin as witnessed arriving all too frequently at Royal Wooten Bassett.

I’m currently thinking about creating a response to seeing Goya’s masterpiece, whilst being mindful of what is happening in the world presently…


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