There are many anecdotes about the works of artists that have been circulating for a long time, and I really do not want to take them seriously. The most typical example is the short story about Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. In the moonlight, the musician saw a blind girl playing the piano, and he aroused his musical thoughts. This is simply a non-existent thing, and it is a shrewd music publisher’s advertising trick. A businessman has a businessman’s tricks, but an artist can’t have an artist’s tricks? Speaking of this, I can’t help but think of a lot of funny words, and most of them vividly portray the temperament of this or that one madman. These may be things that businessmen can’t think of with their crazy designs. If you have to answer This is why, it’s just that the purpose and realm are different, the way is different, and the strange imagination is naturally different. Great artists are not only practitioners of whimsy, providing people with fresh aesthetic enjoyment, but also masters of deviant pranks in that era.
Regarding the artistic style of the great Spanish painter Goya in the 18th century, we should know very well that his paintings are all ironic, and there are many such examples. His distaste for the church at that time was also deeply rooted. As a teenager, he fought against the old-fashioned and domineering church, and finally fled Madrid. After he became a famous painter, with his unruly character, he was bound to ridicule the various dogmas of the church and express it in his works. If he gives sarcasm to the so-called pornographic performance that is regarded as immoral, he will be even more intrusive, and at the same time, it will make the church’s sanctimonious defenders unable to grasp the reason.
His two “Portraits of Maha” often make me think that they are a satire on the asceticism of the church at that time. Of course, this is just my imagination. A popular saying is that the model in the painting is a noble lady, and after asking the artist to paint a nude portrait of her, he asked the artist to paint a dressed portrait for her for fear of being held accountable by her husband. There is also a saying that the model is a prostitute, and the painter intentionally painted her as a noble lady. I personally think that for a painter as talented as Goya, such anecdotes are too weak for him, and it is really not worth spreading. So why has it been passed down since then? Because there was a reason that could not be explained at the time, it was passed down by later people like this.
Regardless of Maha’s class attributes, she may be a real person, or she may not exist at all, and she is completely a figure created by the painter. Then, we will follow this painting to make some logical reasoning. The expressions of the characters in the painting are indeed somewhat provocative, and their legs are tightly closed in a pretentious state, which is also full of the sentiment of a gentle homeland. It is said that she is a prostitute, and I am afraid it is also a bit literal. Probably taking it for granted that a noble lady wouldn’t let someone paint such a bold painting. If this noble lady named Maha really had someone paint this portrait, if it was a spur of the moment, and it was out of order, it would make perfect sense to ask the artist to paint another portrait in clothes. But she didn’t ruin the nude portrait, asked the painter to paint a second portrait, just for a momentary prevarication? Yu Li is difficult to explain, this is really a trick to teach others.
The version I’m talking about is like this. Goya, who has a rebellious personality, is going to do this kind of “indecent” prank. The artist intentionally put the two “Portraits of Maha” together for friends to watch, as a kind of erotic fun joke. In the European concept, using a realistic method to put the clothed and naked figures in one picture, there is an erotic rhyme. At a certain historical stage, this kind of trick can be regarded as a great contempt for the restriction of people’s ideology by the power of the church. For a long period of time, it was not easy to explain such ideas too clearly, so the two stories previously passed on naturally came into being.
The reasons presented here come from my reasoning imagination, as I have no material at hand that would help me to prove things as they were. The point I want to make is that spreading misinformation is part of history. Whether one admits it or not, part of historical research is guesswork, or reasonable guesswork has become part of history.
Throughout the life of the painter Francisco Goya, he can be regarded as a figure who made art into life. In 1760, when Goya was 14 years old, he worked as an apprentice in the studio of the famous painter Martinez in Zaragoza. It is said that at that time. The child’s cynicism gave the teacher a headache. After a while, he offended the church because he wanted to fight injustice in his hometown. In the end, he had to escape to Madrid. Fortunately, he broadened his horizons in the metropolis. Soon, with the encouragement of the teacher, I took the entrance examination for the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid twice, but both failed. So he went to Italy with a circus and served as a bullfighter in the circus. This life reignited his passion for creation and life. He painted diligently and once won an award from the Parma Art Institute. His restless personality prompted him to try to kidnap a girl from a convent. Although she was only in love and the girl was not a nun, Goya was sentenced to prison, and he was released on bail after the Spanish ambassador came forward.
Around 1770, Goya painted several more religious paintings in religious places. These paintings show that he has mastered the Baroque tradition adeptly, but no one can predict the future Goya from these things. But in 1782, he started to paint the giant altarpiece of St. Francis Xavier, “Saint Bernardine of Sienna”, which was commissioned by the royal family for two years. The artistic concept that the painter wanted to express with this religious theme was to try to create space and A vivid sense of depth. In order to survive and to better express the artistic feelings in his life, Goya spent the whole year of 1783 spinning among the powerful and established his status as a portrait painter. He confessed himself in a letter to his close friend Sabart: “Now it seems to have become inflamed and disgusting…” The
painter Goya was, after all, a Spaniard Goya.
We’ve all seen the Spanish dance flamenco, the castanets and stomping sounds mixed into the jittering sound of their dresses, and just listen to it with your eyes closed and your blood boils. If it is said that this dance aroused the passion of the Spaniards, it is completely wrong. It is the fiery temperament and talent of the Spaniards who created their own culture. The Spaniard Goya is the shining jewel of their culture. Seeing his works for the first time is like watching flamenco, it feels strange and surprising.
Goya went from a flamboyant Rococo painter to a passionate Romantic painter. He painted a series of etchings called “Fantastic Rhapsody”, which satirically attacked the etiquette, customs, and the ugly hypocrisy of the church at that time in a brutal way. It can even be seen in his works that he loves, hates or mocks the objects he paints, and his emotional art shows us the ruthless reality, an era when spiritual values are in chaos.
In the “Fantasy Rhapsody” series, there is a painting that left a deep impression on me. A person is sitting at a desk, bats are coming in groups from a dark background, an owl has settled down in front of him, and a civet cat under the seat looks back. More than 200 years have passed since the painter wanted to express the realistic meaning in this copperplate engraving. We can ignore the past and focus on the intuitive feeling of the picture.
Dreams are always a topic that artists pay attention to, and some people may never touch the word “dream” in their entire lives, such as realist painters. In fact, no matter who you are, as long as he is creating, he is bound to have something to do with fantasy, no matter what your ism is. Because creation is a high-level spiritual activity of human beings, it relies on human existence consciousness, but the spiritual activity of painters is to create an illusory effect on the plane by conjuring lines, colors, and shapes from the heart. Above is a work. Therefore, good works are created from the depths of the painter’s heart, and intuition plays a vital role in it. Intuition is in a very advanced position in the human perceptual system, and its function is quite complex. It is said that the dream of Goya’s “Fantasy Rhapsody” is the verve of flamenco dance. This is intuition at work, because there is no necessary logical connection between them.
After all we are talking about a long dream.
Let’s face the reality and make a logical inference here. Even if you have Goya’s skilled artistic skills, you wouldn’t dare to paint like him; you are a Spaniard and can dance flamenco with passion. , you can’t be as arrogant as Goya. We have to say that this kind of arrogant character often tempers a person’s intuitive awareness, because he often has to rely on his intuition to do things, especially painting. Let’s also talk about this “Fantasy Rhapsody”, its sense of form can have such a shocking effect. It is definitely not designed. The whole picture has the author’s temperament. The end result is full of life, and this state of art is the conscience of art!
In 1792, Goya suffered from a serious illness and became deaf. The unexpected blow of life made his restless and enthusiastic character reach the climax of sadness. He changed the perspective of life and re-examined the world. There are no more eulogies of heroes, but only truthful depictions of war. Between 1810 and 1814, he created his famous series of etched prints “The Scourge of War” and two other famous works, “The Revolt of the 2nd of May” (1808) and “The Massacre of the 3rd of May” (1808). .
His works in the years leading up to the Spanish War of Independence had almost become a foreshadowing of this great catastrophe, and after the outbreak of the war, these paintings displayed its eerily documentary quality. The outbreak of the war and its catastrophic consequences caused a great shock to the mind of the great painter Goya. This emotional catharsis is reflected in Goya’s series of prints and other forms of painting. Under his brush, for the first time, war was depicted as a filthy act that was useless and without honor. There were no more heroes. In war, there was only the difference between the murderer and the murdered.
Painter Goya’s black paintings in his later years, done with rough technique and gloomy tones, can be said to be the forerunners of Symbolism and Surrealism. Goya grew up in the era of romanticism, however, he has the ability to see the darkness of the times, and this ability makes him dedicate his life to exposing the ugliness of human nature. The artist has his own extraordinary perspective and behavior. In 1824, the 78-year-old painter Francisco Goya took a half-year leave of absence from King Ferdinand VII of Spain on the grounds that he went to Brampiers in France to recuperate. However, he went straight to Bordeaux, France. and settled here with his lover. Two years later, in 1826, Goya returned to Madrid on a donkey and resigned from the court painter to Ferdinand VII.
Goya is hailed in Europe as a continuation of the old masters and at the same time the beginning of modern painting. From his many works, we can see romanticism, realism, impressionism, expressionism, surrealism, and even the contemporary fashionable cartoonism painting style.
Most importantly, we see the humanity and conscience of Francisco Goya as an artist.
