Francisco Goya, The Third of May (1814)
William
Hogarth (1697-1764) and Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) overlap
well as artistic expressions about Europe, at least Western Europe, in political
transition before and during the Enlightenment.
Hogarth the Englishman and Goya the Spaniard contrast in a few ways such
as nationality (obviously), political atmosphere (English Parliamentary system
with monarchy and Spain with a monarchy), and culture wherein both societies
favored foreign artists somewhat over the locals.
Parallels
reveal themselves, however, upon closer look at the details of their
lives. Both had parents who had some kind
of professional, if not class, pull; Richard Hogarth was a schoolmaster and
Latin scholar, Jose Goya was the son of a notary as well as skilled as a gilder
with a wife, Dona Gracia, who was a bidalgo, a member of the aristocratic
lower strata. Hogarth and Goya attended
the primary and secondary levels of school after which both attended schools of
trade either in engraving (Hogarth) or painting (Goya).
As
artists, I see that they shared an outlook that included the common person
without necessarily romanticizing or always satirizing their roles, similarly so
with the aristocracy. They did this
sometime objectively, sometime subjectively, brutally so, to show the degradation
of humanity in its trudging along their lives.
They displayed how hopes could become misfortunes, how a victory may
backfire, and occasionally how humor may save the day.
Living
during the Enlightenment era, they saw and surely knew about some of the high
hopes this new way of thinking raised, that people could vote for
representatives instead of taking it for granted that clergy and royalty always
knew what was best for the population. Among its proponents, the faith was that humanity
could employ Reason so as to find order in life and society, and figure out the
next best step to take. The notion that
it was not witchcraft that was a problem but religious bigotry or that tolerance
was preferable to prejudice, and that justice was a matter of public and
private concern, remain admirable aspects of the Enlightenment legacy down to
this day.
Nonetheless,
society dissolution, if not also wartime invasion, dispelled these grand
feelings of optimism, forcing these artists to present the challenge of reality
in either a sarcastic or savage way. Hogarth’s
series Marriage a la Mode or “Marriage in the Current Fashion,” is one
of many series of paintings and prints that offered severe criticism of urban
life. The “Election” series is one that,
unfortunately, may hold true in democracies everywhere.
Likewise,
Goya, seeing the ruin of the promise of Charles IV and, later, the catastrophe
of the Napoleonic invasion (1807-1814), offered many depictions about the
tragedy of Spain. His print series’
title The Disasters of War sums it up economically, exhibiting gory details
of combat and torture, apathy and cruelty.
These
artists presented the beginnings of our outlook, one that encompasses the Industrial
Revolution as well as the current Information Age. Sadly, it is an outlook that has inured us to
scenes of malice and viciousness, accustomed as we are to seeing these on the
television or internet news reports. The
good news is these artists still may prick our conscience when we may be prone
to nod off during times of state-sanctioned violence and social corruption.
