In October 1994, Russell Vallance of Farnham in the UK wrote to The Independent. “Goya's original work shows atrocity feeding on atrocity and is a powerful indictment of the brutalities of war, as relevant to Bosnia today as to Spain in the last century.” What was true in 1994 is just as true today in the wake of the battle of Aleppo in Syria. Biographer Robert Hughes credits Goya as the first modern artist and the last old master. What's interesting about Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was that in his teen years in the mid-18th century there would have been no question that he belonged to the tradition before his time, rooted in the past and perfection of the Spanish masters. Five of the works that form the centerpiece of the epic and historic exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem on view until April 18 were commissioned for the Spanish Royal Court in Goya's early years. We can see the color and frolicking that the artist witnessed around him exhibited against a blunt red background in masterpieces such as The Straw Manikin (1792), with children playing with a stuffed mannequin, and in The Parasol (1777) showing a man and woman with a green parasol. To bring two oil paintings from the Prado Museum in Spain to Israel involved tremendous collaboration, according to a statement by James S. Snyder, director of the Israel Museum. “Showcasing Goya's artistic virtuosity and demonstrating the breadth of the Israel Museum's partnerships with its sister institutions worldwide, 10 major paintings from the Prado Museum in Madrid will be displayed alongside important works on paper from the Israel Museum's own extensive holdings.” It is important that the exhibition takes place to celebrate 30 years of diplomatic relations with Spain. “Especially with works by Goya that are as meaningful as these, rendering with such power and breadth of personal to social to political life in Spain during his time,” Snyder said. The collaboration was aided by Manuela B. Mena Marques, the head of 18th century and Goya paintings department at the Prado, who selected the 10 works for loan. 'Self Portrait' (photo credit: ELIE POSNER / ISRAEL MUSEUM) Titled “Daydreams and Nightmares,” the exhibition at the Israel Museum was curated by Shlomit Steinberg. On one far wall are three large paintings, including The Parasol and The Straw Manikin mentioned above. To get to them, visitors walk past Goya's etchings and aquatints. The Israel Museum owns some of these from three collections: La Tauromaquia (bullfighting; 1815-16), Los Disparates (1815-23) and Disasters of War (1810-20), while a fourth, called Los Capriches (1797-98) is on extended loan from the Weizmann Institute of Science. Steinberg notes that most of the etchings were not published until the 1860s and they provide a deeper understanding of Goya as both a modernist and social critic. “He criticized elements in Spanish society but did not jeopardize his position or [risk an] Inquisition query.” After all, we forget that even in Goya's time the Inquisition was still powerful and blasphemy was punishable. “Spain didn't have a long tradition of printmaking. In his study period he was one of the first,” says Steinberg. Accompanying the black-and-white prints is a short excerpt from the 2006 film Goya's Ghosts, which shows the process of making an etching. “He was a master of light and shade. He also depicted the composition according to his needs, such as the bullfights. He uses the horizontal format, and when he tells about everyday Madrid he does vertical composition like a book.” 'Dead Birds' by Francisco Goya (photo credit: ELIE POSNER / ISRAEL MUSEUM) There is such a great contrast between the younger Goya and his etchings and later work that it is almost like seeing works by two people. His earlier paintings, including most of the 10 on display, show “domestic and pastoral scenes,” that are full of “light and shadow,” according to a statement by the museum. He was “eager to please his patrons and guided by the promise of public approval and financial stability.” “I saw this,” Goya wrote on one of his etchings depicting a cruel scene during the war with Napoleon. Napoleon's army had occupied Spain in 1807, and in 1808 there was a Spanish popular uprising. Goya famously depicted the beginning of the rebellion in The Second of May and The Third of May (not in the exhibition) in 1814 after the French had been ejected. However, during the course of the war the artist witnessed masses of atrocities. To cope, he set them down in etching: corpses mutilated, men lynched and executed, women firing cannons at the enemy. One frame depicts men chopped into pieces and festooned on a tree, a head pushed onto a branch. Such scenes remind us of the Syrian war. This is where Goya is a unique artist: his transformation from court painter, artist of the bourgeois pleasures, to a man caught between daydreams and nightmares, as the exhibit is faithfully titled. He was a very human artist, and in that sense also modern. In letters he wrote, he vulgarly described his passions and sexual appetites. His etchings of witches and particularly Linda Maestra, which shows a nude woman riding a broom while clinging on to an elderly man, is especially disturbing. He also depicted condemned men and prisoners. Even when etching bullfighting, he felt compelled to provide an image of the “dreadful events in the front rows of the ring at Madrid and death of the mayor of Torrejon,” showing a man impaled on a bull and others trampled to death. 'Shepherd Playing a Pipe' by Francisco Goya (photo credit: ELIE POSNER / ISRAEL MUSEUM) Biographer Robert Hughes wrote in 2003 that Goya “wanted to make images that compel a moral understanding of ordinary and terrible things. In this, he is unlike practically any artist now alive.” What Hughes notes, in passing, is that Goya is the patron saint of war photographers. More than patron saint, he channeled the horrors of life. In photography we still feel removed from the suffering, but something about Goya approaches a reality that few others have touched. “Francisco Goya: Daydreams and Nightmares” closes on April 18, 2017. For more information: www.imj.org.il/exhibitions/presentation/exhibit/?id=1111
‘Francisco Goya: Daydreams and Nightmares’ on show at the Israel Museum(photo credit: ELIE POSNER / ISRAEL MUSEUM)