Category: Sin categoría Page 8 of 10

“Science has its protocols and scientific protocol requires that there is a method to investigate and, precisely, the ‘eye’ is the denial of the same, and here it is consensus” (sic).

Against the eye as a gift, the method is discussion and consensus, sensibly argued by Jesusa Vega and Julián Vidal in the ‘Proceedings of the Conference Memory and Meaning. The use and receipt of vestiges from the past’, published by the department of History of Art of the University of Valencia (Spain).

Specialists complain that it has been revitalizing myths that were believed to be overmatched in the science of art as the ‘good eye’. “This method to practice attributions, based on praise of the eye which observes and certifies what sees, has left a noxious imprint. Those who practice call it visual experience; others, ‘good eye’ or ‘clinical eye’, and for those who do not have it, ‘glass eye’, and was the justification appeared in the middle of the 19^th century”. The eye prioritizes even over the documentation of painting which is under investigation. And is used either to challenge authorship as to discover new authorship… of Goya. The fixed one since the beginning, who is always in the ‘eye’ of a hurricane, is… Goya.

In my opinion, another thing that should be very different is the attribution. For such, it will be necessary, even though not essential, something more than a trained look. I mean. ‘Fled to Egypt’ and ‘Death of San Alberto of Jerusalem’, two canvases that have been allegedly hidden in a convent of the Carmelites in Cuenca (Spain), have been awarded last month to the early work of Francisco de Goya. What method has been followed in this case?

The paintings are displayed in an exhibition organized by the nuns of Cuenca and it is recklessly affirmed that remained hidden. So if hidden, how are in exhibition? And, coinciding with this – despite of being hidden – they are discovered and showed. But how can this be? How does it explain? Cuenca is just 160 km away from the Prado Museum, the largest collection of Goya’s in the world… or from the Museum of the Academy of San Fernando and the National Chalcography, and no one were aware of this.

Indeed yes, there is an expert who attributes them to Goya “although has not done any scientific study to verify the authorship of both canvases” but, to add even something missing, “has not consulted any expert of the Prado Museum in the desire of owning his own opinion”.

On the other hand, the director of the magazine that publishes the news of the discovery and attribution, has said that normally when someone attributes a work to some classic of art always ask for second opinions, although on this occasion it has not done so to the first ‘criteria’ of the expert that concerns us, “who has shown on many occasions that it is a good researcher”.

As we see, this figure of the expert, inevitably, is present also in the world of arts and not even say in the vicinity of Goya and his work. This title of expert I do not truly know how can get access, because it includes conditions that I suspect inscrutable even for the own experts, who eager to learn, deep down, it would say that even suspect of their weakness as experts.

It is known that the artist draws a feeling and slight dress up in a wall at good looking. Or that the internist medical, not mentioning the classic general practitioner, diagnosed in a way that today practically is not exercised in the West. And what is clear today is that issued the opinion of the expert automatically comes near or far another expert who believes radically opposite, because like in this case can argue that still scientific data has not demonstrate the new attribution. And because so few objective arguments are given, and everything is so light and hurried, anyone with a minimum common sense is authorized to question what we have been told, and to think that if we will not be at another bizarre vision of Goya, because one suspects if it will not be many of these expert assessments what in the rich Spanish continues to be a more or less sudden hunch, a nose stinging or, simply, appetite to take position before another expert overtakes and publish it first. Because the arguments put forward in this case may give rise to this and other interpretations possibly as pilgrims as the expert’s.

Perhaps due to all this is the reason why the impact has been limited and like “about what is not documented we cannot talk”, the academic world has received it in its usual line, dedicating a charity silence. Possibly because they are no longer the times for these things, more or less unusual and seemingly improvised, but instead today are used up to the limit rigorous work systems that treats, usually successfully, to meet exactly all of the favourable and unfavourable aspects of each question, assaying up to details and most trivial strokes.

Then well, this comprehensive way of working is also the regularly use for the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. Reason why I do personally, and as an interesting method to build an opinion about a picture, take the super Decalogue -which actually comprising twelve sections- of ‘L’affaire Velázquez’, the attractive novel by Thomas Hoving, former Conservative Chief of the Metropolitan in New York, published 25 years ago (French Edition by Silvie Messinger. Paris, 1989).

It reads as follows:

1. – Write down the first impression.

2. – Describe the work in its minor details, to force you to see it all.

3. – To determine the condition of the object, its flaws, its age.

4. – Does it have a specific use?

5. – The style.

6. – The subject, the matter, the topic.

7. – The iconography.

8. – What is historic.

9. – The bibliography.

10. – Ask for an outside opinion.

11. – Scientific analysis. Write down the results of all investigations (microscope, chemical test, x-ray, infrared, ultraviolet, spectrograph, thermo luminescence, etc.).

12. – Back to the first impression, and if still held, say therein.

In regard with what is said above, is not less interesting point 10 of this method. To me, both that point as the full Dodecalogue seems to me to be more honest, what does the reader want me to tell. Especially at a time in which advanced techniques of scanners, microscopes and touch screens are used, codes are decoded and at some universities, such as Dartmouth, are seeking all kind of compelling evidences and digital images and complex statistical calculations are used to authenticate works of art.

Gonzalo de Diego

It has been written of Goya as modern, precursor of modernity and meaning exponent of the artistic and cultural progress that, on the basis of the so-called Century of Lights, ahead of the 20^th century, and the truth is that in the majority of cases either nothing is said actually, or under the bombastic umbrella of modernism, or blindness to see his art, is hidden a rain of words in a real desert of ideas.

It will not be me who using this blog intends to give lessons to anyone and, much less, specialists and scholars that in good faith have tried to illuminate, with their contributions, in a topic poorly and not very well explained by others.

It is true and well known that without Goya the Spanish painting from the 18^th, with the Bayeu, Maella, Giaquinto, etc., would have been very little and pretty poor with all this symbolist and academic load that the genius of Goya would break, declaring himself father of what would come later. Educated in the splendid rococo, he met the preludes of romanticism, impressionism and even abstraction, expressionism and surrealism itself. So, we know that with all their grandeur certainly opened the modern art. However, and as the Ambassador of Spain and academic José Antonio Vaca de Osma, writes “all we think we know him, and nor he understands himself”. And in this regard I would like to look at some aspects that can be, in my view at least, as a possibly interesting approaches.

Said Eduardo Schuré (Strasbourg, 1841 – Paris, 1929) that exist in each era geniuses which belong more to a time that still lies ahead than no to the one they live, and that’s why they appear as foreigners opposite to his contemporaries. And that the early influences of their feelings and ideas, immersed in the invisible ocean of intelligence, will flood the world fifty or one hundred years after their death. Shakespeare says that major future events first project on its own shadow before their presence occupies the universe with its advent. They are the forerunners and the rebels.

Those who, like Goya, interrogate themselves with all the harshness and the mixture of disappointment fear of the unknown, depressive sadness and willingness to go forward, that is nearly ubiquitous. We are thus to a great pre-romantic Goya, alone, isolated, genial precursor, and thereafter the first and the source of all others. Because, what could do an intelligent and unbiased man in the Spain of the late 18^th and early 19^th Centuries?:
“Shut up, work alone, be submitted in the exterior, remain free in their inner selves”.

Autorretrato. Dibujo a la aguada, a tinta china. 233 x 144 mm.
Nueva York, Metropolitan Museum

Goya is a misunderstood and a dissatisfied that also lives permanently in the limit. In the limit of tolerance due to violence of the war, its aftermath, of their terrible bestiality. On the back edge of a very hard post-war period and which come to light all the scourges of a troubled society. In the limit of patience before a few unbearable ruling classes that, drunk of selfishness, ignoring the people and its misfortune. On the edge of his own illness and dissatisfaction… On the edge of fantasy who only see the eyes of the heart. Dissatisfaction is a thirst that does not turn off. It is elusive, as if it had a hole inside, a gap in the soul where escapes the precious, beautiful, good thing that lets him not be happy with anything.

And he lives in an introspective duality which forms the genius of a precursor that, in the last stage of his life, has given the definitive size and opens the Modernity to the world releasing it of sterile impositions. The result of this entire dilemma is not only a work, a vital set that certainly constitute expressions of genuine and deep feelings. All of them. By dissimilar they may seem. And neither are flurry by any kind of conventionality, nor any ritual or any hypocrisy. They are free and reflecting each in the other give rise to a discourse that is possibly the most important, truthful, simultaneous and alternating, and because it is also effectively the last in the time of his long career.

Romantic Goya?

Romanticism is a heavenly grace… or infernal, to whom we owe eternal stigmas.

Indeed yes, Goya is a romantic, as his experience himself a revolutionary reaction against rationalism, in certain aspects of Illustration and especially Classicism, giving more importance to the feeling and breaking with tradition, based on a set of stereotypical rules.

Seen from today, at the beginning of the 21^st century, we speak of eternal stigmas and eternal values. And if we analyze with a certain careful Goya and his work we will see with some clarity that in him the stigmas are still signs or symptoms of diseases, in this case moral, like dishonour or bad reputation and others that we shall see below. And values continue to be the qualities that give estimates, such as honesty, loyalty, cultural identity, respect, responsibility, solidarity, tolerance and some more, constituting the foundation of peaceful coexistence. So they are fundamental beliefs that help to prefer, appreciate and choose a few things rather than others, or a behaviour rather than other.

Autorretrato con  tricornio

Goya, either in the Caprichos (Whims) as in the Desastres de la Guerra (Disasters of War), talks about moral values, although present or show us the eternal stigmas of humanity. Because Goya also develops and perfects his moral values through personal experience and in his work reflects his interests, feelings and most important beliefs. Cares, a lot, to defend and grow in his dignity. And somehow all that constitutes the prophetic announcement of what will come after.

For the great Leo Moulin (Brussels, 1906-1996) the question is: Is there to save the eternal values? And he answers himself: Our civilization, – the 20^th century – daughter of modernity announced by Goya, presents the peculiarity, unique in history, of producing toxins that destroy itself. It contains elements of its own death. It is a society that has bad historical consciousness (colonization, wars, the current systemic crisis…). And besides, the values of our contemporary society are not inert, but autonomous. They evolve in unexpected directions and sometimes dangerous for the social body, thus becoming toxins: freedom becomes anarchy; equality, egalitarianism; science, scientism; the right to happiness, hedonism; the technique, a good in itself; progress, a cruel God that our society happily sacrifices its soul and, sometimes, whole generations, etc.

But a society cannot interrupt its own life, under penalty of death. It may not be continuous and totally put into question, even less than the heart, which cannot stop beating. It is made a transfer of what is fleeting by definition to what by definition must be continuous.

And Moulin concludes affirming that values must be lived as if they were eternal. Hence the radical anticipation of a pre-modern Goya whose emotions are protagonists because they certainly are expressions of genuine and deep feelings. All of them. By dissimilar they may seem. And neither are flurry by any kind of conventionality, nor any ritual or any hypocrisy. They are free and reflecting each in other give rise to a discourse that is possibly the most important speech of his time, accurate, simultaneous and alternating.

Finally, let’s remember once again to Moulin, who says that the European humanism is wary of deviations that will threaten it and that, in fact, threaten our society. To conclude that we all must, at the same time, accept this fact – inherent to our culture – and be attentive and vigilant.

Gonzalo de Diego

On past October 2^nd some self-proclaimed anarchists (Insurrectional Command Mateo Morral) placed a home-made explosive device, low power, in the Basilica del Pilar in Zaragoza. The terrorist cell is named after the anarchist who attacked the King Alfonso XIII in 1906. The bomb, loaded with two kilos of black gunpowder and a clock activation system, was placed under a bench and the named via sacra of the main altar, very close to the choir and superb organ, that must be restored. It exploded at 1:50pm and caused material damage destroying several banks and was detachment of plaster from the ceiling, large dust but no casualties, except one lady who suffered an injury in her eardrum, and despite at this time there are usually still prayers in the Basilica, and also at that time the students of two schools from Zaragoza and Valladolid were in the temple on a guided tour.

It quickly became national news and the memory of the vast majority of the people of Zaragoza and many Spaniards carried back to the unfortunate August 3^rd 1936. At that date, two weeks after the Civil War begun, a Republican Fokker took off from El Prat aerodrome in Barcelona, around 1 in the early morning, bound for Zaragoza.

It was piloted by Second Lieutenant Manuel Gayoso Suárez, military aviator in a supernumerary position and at the service of the Spanish Postal Air Lines L.A.P.E. (Líneas Aéreas Postales de España). There are reasons that lead us to suppose that the aforementioned Gayoso made such action without receiving the command to do so and only with complicit approval of the head of El Prat aerodrome, the aviator pilot Felipe Díaz Sandino, Lieutenant Colonel of Infantry; although, indeed yes, interpreting the feelings and opinions of the republican authorities from regional Government of Catalonia. The three-engine plane piloted by Gayoso carried four bombs of 50 kg. each and arriving to Zaragoza, shortly after 2 in the early morning, gave several low passes flying 150 metres high and almost touching the towers of El Pilar.

The most reliable versions say that quarter to 3 the pilot dropped three bombs, manifestly directed towards the part of the temple in which is venerated the image of the Virgen del Pilar, but none exploded. There is also who added that launched the fourth bomb, which fell directly in the river Ebro. It is found that one of them was riveted on the street, a few meters away from the main façade of the temple and, after getting several paving stones, left a silhouette of a cross on the pavement.

Other two artefacts fell on the Basilica, one crossed the exterior dome giving on the nerve of discharge of the Holy Chapel dome. The other fell very close there, also through the exterior dome and ceiling to make an absolutely visible footprint through this and the Goya frescos on its bottom right side, as well as in the adjacent border. They showed the intent of the pilot to damage the very heart of the Basilica and, no exploding, caused damage more of artistic type than material.

So none of the bombs came to explode in spite of assuming that its fuses were working correctly, because otherwise is totally absurd to make a whole night raid of war with no result. There are those who believe that bombs had no fuse or that were disabled, what is hard to believe but at the end is already the least.

The truth is that occurred hugely important artistic damages because the fresco painted by Goya in 1772 to the bandstand of the Virgin, representing the “Allegory of the Divine or of the Glory” according to the Earl of Viñaza or from Gudiol, the “Adoration of the name of God by the Angels”, was directly attacked in so wild as in hallucinating aggression. Would never think Francisco de Goya that this works, which sketch was approved by the Cathedral chapter for being “a piece of skill and special taste”, would be so directly involved in a brutal and hateful attack on his Virgen del Pilar, and that, in addition, since its inception is a very notable and important part of the artistic heritage of the Nation.

That very same morning of August 3^rd was carried one of the bombs to the company Talleres Mercier, specialized since many years before in the production of war material, for its study and disarming. It is assumed that was elected the one founded in better general condition after the attack. Talleres Mercier would be militarized two days later, on August 5^th, and was settled in its premises the Regional Commission for the Manufacture of War Material in Aragon, under the overall coordination and leadership of Colonel of Artillery and industrial engineer don Antonio de Diego García who, as a Lieutenant Colonel retired, had been incorporated into active duty with this mission. But Talleres Mercier not only leaded these tasks, but it also practiced the coordination of work in other factories in the area.

With one staff more than trained and used to precision and special technical difficulty, work proceeded to fully copy the bomb, because the model was non-existent in the national side, and its subsequent manufacture in series. The two remaining bombs, restored and nickel-plated, are displayed on a pilaster of the Holy Chapel with a legend that says: “Two of the three bombs thrown against the S.T.M. DEL PILAR, on August 3^rd 1936″

As evidence of not only technical but also artistic skills of Talleres Mercier and its staff, is good to recall some of the pieces performed by the worker Venancio Serrano, author of a few copies of artillery shells, 10.5 cm calibre, sculpted in the warhead with the image of the Virgen del Pilar. It highlights among them a singular piece depicting the bombing of the Basilica, in an artistic style naïve and truly lucky.

Because of this involuntary way were united, once again, the illustrious master Francisco de Goya and the Virgen del Pilar, patron saint of Zaragoza, Aragon and Spanishness, to whom Goya himself refers in a letter to his friend Zapater in July 1780 that “for my house I do not need many furniture, because it seems to me that with a picture of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, a table, five chairs, a frying pan, a boot and a tiple and grill and lamp all else is superfluous”.

Gonzalo de Diego