Editor's Note:

So many of us are looking for beauty. We want to be moved by something. Our modern media ecosystem promises us this in an evergreen stream. We know the promise is empty.

And we scroll anyway. Many of us see dozens of artworks daily. Those few that do earn our attention for more than a moment have to capture it mid-swipe, in rolling motion down the feed. This is not a perfect metric.

It would be less of an issue if we were content with the stuff we do see. Instead we feel like we’re in the middle of the desert. Motion is scarce. The inspiration has gone limp.

Pessimism is easy, but the truth is that although our media and information ecosystem might be hostile to beauty and meaning, its poison requires our willing consumption. We possess our taste, our attention, our intention. Theoretically, we can decide what to do with them.

And there is beauty out there. More than that: there are monuments to human artistic achievement, so many, not in vaults or behind walls but perfectly accessible via the same glass surface we blame for so many of our problems, this ambivalent device capable of so much more than running Instagram.

Into this context we offer our new Great Works series.

Periodically, we will highlight a select sample of one master’s works. Furnished with context but not requiring it, our goal is to give you a chance to stop and appreciate something beautiful, something moving, something great.

These works will not always be flashy. They will rarely be recent. They’ll be easy to scroll by. You’ll have to choose not to. Should you do so, you’ll encounter some of the Great Works of our species.

We ask you to remember that aesthetic experiences take time, focus, and attention. They can be enhanced by context and information. They reward effort and practice. Setting aside the energy for one is not as pleasant as seeing what’s in the next rectangle, but it might stick with you a bit longer than what’s down there.

Whatever you decide to do, we hope you feel something.

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Context for the work

Francisco Goya straddled two eras. He was one of the last ‘Old Masters.’ He was among the first ‘Moderns.’ His bridged Romanticism and Modernism, and defined turn of nineteenth century art in Spain and the world. Working at a time of social as well as artistic transition, Goya’s art was both formally inventive and societally provocative.

Goya’s first big gig was as court painter to the Spanish Crown. Depictions of royalty defined his early period, perhaps best typified by his Charles IV of Spain and His Family, a tremendous group portrait of the royal family.

The Peninsular War was a pivot point in Goya’s career. He remained in Spain throughout the conflict, watched the French turn on the Spanish and install a foreigner on the throne. The French occupation and the bloody resistance to it impacted him greatly.

A companion pair of two of his most famous paintings, The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808, portrayed in explicit fashion this period. The Third in particular was a groundbreaking work, breaking conventions of the depiction of wartime subjects, and is sometimes said to be the first painting of the modern era.

Liberation from the occupation ended in more disappointment when the restored monarchy refused meaningful reform. The resultant bitterness and alienation drove Goya inward. He moved into a converted farmhouse outside of Madrid and lived in solitude. The house was known as ‘The House of The Deaf Man’, ironic as Goya himself was rendered deaf by an unknown illness earlier in his life.

Isolated, aging, disillusioned, and anxious about his own dubious sanity, Goya began his final major group of works which have come to be known as his Black Paintings.

Goya’s Black Paintings

Likely made between 1820 and 1823, Goya painted the 14 works that comprise his Black Paintings directly onto the walls of his house. They were not commissioned, entirely his own creation, and likely never meant to leave his home. Darkly disturbing and untitled, the works embody a formal extension of his style, a movement toward a new treatment of the figure.

The arc of Goya’s career begins with documentation and departs from it. Starting with portraiture, moving towards dramatized events, and finally, with his Black Paintings, Goya arrives at hallucinations of the soul.

There’s an absurdism in the works, and a deep moral complexity. Emaciated men who appear on the brink of death eagerly scarf down soup. Saturn’s expression as he eats his son is one of surprise, reflexive “shock at his own monstrousness”¹. If Goya’s middle work depicted struggle, his Black Paintings depict the fallout, a land abandoned to madness.

But there are also hopeful scenes. The Dog (or The Drowning Dog depending on how one interprets the sloping brown line cutting just below the dog’s head) shows an uplifted head towards the shadow of an unseen figure. It’s hard to justify, but this image has always seemed incredibly optimistic to me, suggestive of rapture.

Goya’s handling of expression was always masterful, and these works are no exception. Taking a moment to examine the faces in Witches’ Sabbath or Men Reading or A Pilgrimage will be rewarded with depth, narrative, and personalities.

There is no coherent narrative or prescriptive meaning one can address to these works. What we can do is face them, open ourselves, grapple.