Tag Archives: Kenneth Clark

it’s an ordered world: plane enjoyment

The essential element in any classical composition is order. Although, all composition is order in one form or another, in classical composition order is associated with the idea of repose and possibly can exist for itself alone as an exercise, … Continue reading

Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

a country doctor: chasing the maid through the gallery

It is another odd Kafka story: A Country Doctor. And the story of another peculiar fellow: Bernard Berenson. The aesthete and art dealer/pundit of late nineteenth-early twentieth century who promoted and profited from selling Italian Renaissance art to the deep … Continue reading

Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

duchess of alba: seven year fling

At about the time that Goya began work on the “Caprichos” , he also began his famous but always somewhat ambiguous affair with the Duchess of Alba, probably the most vivid figure that her society produced. In 1795 she visited … Continue reading

Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

the deaf man’s house: paint it black

Somehow with Francisco Goya, we never quite ask why a man whose friends in maturity were among the most enlightened thinkers and the most devoted moralists of the age of reason; a man who, we have kept telling ourselves, shared … Continue reading

Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

3 rd of may: shoot in may and go away

Like all great historical and philosophical themes, analyzing the Third of May is somewhat vulnerable to some superficial and not necessarily valid interpretations. The originality of Goya’s treatment in his depiction of the executioners. Where they might expectedly have be … Continue reading

Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

grim tidings: disasters and masters of war

A preoccupation with mystery, violence and the irrational was always present in Goya’s art. As the years passed, casual observations of the foibles and horrors of the world were transfigured into a vision of life that came to dominate his … Continue reading

Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Los caprichos: a wasteland of reason

But if Francisco Goya saw vice, corruption and foolishness in high places, Goya, unlike many of his contemporaries in France and England , did not discover a compensatory nobility in the common man. In fact, the contrary. His first great … Continue reading

Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

viscious frailties at the most extreme

At the Spanish court, Goya was advantageously placed to observe vicious frailties at their most extreme. At the time that he became Painter of the Household, Charles IV had just succeeded to the throne in place of an elder brother … Continue reading

Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

an enemy of irrational tendencies

Goya’s life was split in two near its midpoint by an illness that very nearly killed him when he was forty-six years old. If he had died, he would have left a large body of work establishing him as one … Continue reading

Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

revolutionary for reason: consciousness of a tragic humanity

Horror. The world one usually associates with the work of Goya. Even in his brilliant early years as a court painter, an air of evil hung suspiciously in the background of his rococo paintings. Then, after his illness, they lept … Continue reading

Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment