|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Images...
The Disparates are the most opaque and unreadable of Goya's print series.
There are 18 plates in the first Spanish edition of 1864 and 22 in the first French edition of 1877.
None of the plates are easy to understand. The figures and situations depicted in most of them
are grotesque and surprising.
Are they monsters from the Spanish carnival? Are
they pictorial satires on the political situation
in Goya's contemporary Spanish society?
Are they wholly personal fantasies?
Do they relate to proverbs and
sayings in the Spanish language?
Sarah Symmons examines these possibilities
and looks at the Disparates as hermetic works in the Goya iconology.
© Dr Sarah Symmons 2000 - 2007
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Given at the Edinburgh conference on Raeburn, his copyists, printmakers and comtemporaries, this lecture explores the similarities
in portraiture between Goya and Raeburn. Referring to their common artistic dependence on Velazquez and their enthusiasm for
portraits on exhibition in Georgian London, the argument focusses particularliy on portraits of women and the way in which the
female portraits by both artists influenced portraiture in Britain during the Edwardian period and comtemporary portraitists in
America.
© Dr Sarah Symmons 2000 - 2006
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This lecture was first given in Spanish at the Prado Museum in MAdrid as part of the Goya
series of lectures sponsored by the Amigos del Museo del Prado in 2000-2001. The lecture was
subsequently published along with others by Juliet Wilson Bareau, Calvo Seraller, Robert Rosenblum
and others in the volume of essays about Goya published by the Amigos in 2002.
The figure of the Duchess of Alba and the part she played as an inspiration in Goya's painting
career has always fascinated me and the first portrait Goya painted of her (Alba collection, Madrid)
shows her wearing a white dress and a red sash. Why did she choose to wear this outfit and what was
her attitude to this portrait?
This lecture throws new light on the relationship between Goya and this beautiful woman at the Spanish Court in the 1790s
© Dr Sarah Symmons 2000 - 2006
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In February 1700 Francisco Goya, painter to the king of Spain, Carlos IV,published in Madrid a set
of eight prints called the Caprichos ( Caprices). Nothing like these images had ever been seen before
in Spain: they incorporated technical boldness in the use of new methods of printing with artistic
audacity in the depictions of highly unflattering, grotesque and even obscene portrayals of human behaviour
The title of this lecture has therefore two meanings:
-
The first acknowledges the artist's courage in the explicit quality of his images.
-
The second pays tribute to the originality of his methods of combiningh aquatint,etching,drypoint and several more (often experimental) techniques onto copperplates.
© Dr Sarah Symmons 2004 - 2006
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- Why does Goya's art look so different from the work of late 18th-century contemporaries such as Jacques - Louis David or Sir Joshua Reynolds?
- Why do artists working today still explore Goya's prints and drawings for inspiration?
- Why is he linked to Romanticism ?
This lecture examines the trajectory of Goya's career, his tender portraits of beautiful women,
his depictions of demons, ghouls and witches, his 'Black Paintings'
and his uncompromising images of war.
With his huge range of inspiration this artist is seen as one of the forerunners of modern art movements.
In a private letter he referred to himself as 'the demon painter'. What did he mean?
© Dr Sarah Symmons 2005 - 2006
|
|
|
|
