Vanity, stupidity and superstition are recurring threads in the darkness and light of Goya's etchings and human barbarity rears its gruesome head in the Disasters of War, which were wrought when the French invaded Spain in 1807, and the ensuing war and famine.

In the set of 22 Los Disparates, Goya's unfailing eye for life's detail takes on more nightmarish qualities, and many people reared on Painter X and the fantasy art of the present are staggered by the amount of work Goya put into dressing his dark visions.

My first meeting with Goya was on the bookshelves of Farnworth Library at the end of my Nana's street, where I first set eyes on his Naked Maja. That visit was with my ma when I was at Primary School. But the Naked Maja wasn't for letting go and she kept luring me back for another sneaky peak whenever I was at Nan's for tea.
A more significant encounter with Francisco de Goya occurred at the Museo del Prado, in the room which houses the Black Paintings, when the buds of boyish curiosity had been uprated to a different type of mild euphoria.
I wrote in my notebook at the time: 'Want to see talent? Go and see Goya's Black Paintings. If you are alive where it matters, there's a good chance you'll be touched permanently. Walking into that room was like coming home. Exhilaration.'
My notebook also reminds me that the euphoria was short lived.
'But stand still and note the movement around you. Everyone moving, moving, moving. Looking, yet seeing nothing. The Human Condition. Still got your copy of HELLO magazine to hand?'
At one moment I felt privileged to be sharing a room with the darkest efforts of the great Goya, who had the rare ability to turn out supreme work in pretty much any medium, with little compromise to his skills or his artistic need to illustrate without undue flattery. And in the next moment I was finding dark prophecy in the dark paintings on the walls and its fulfillment all around. Goya's dark mood is easily caught. Converted to canvas in 1873, fifty years after Goya's death, the Black Paintings were originally murals, painted onto the walls of Goya's Madrid home, La Quinta del Sordo and The Pilgrimage to San Isidro was given pride of place on one of the main downstairs walls, facing the similarly infected Witches Sabbath. The darkness Goya created would've surrounded him day and night: this was no fleeting fancy. Unless the intellectual pretensions flutter to deceive, or it suffers from the Tracy Syndrome (which requires the viewer to work hard to make up for the lack of talent and vision), a work of art is not something that necessarily needs to be learnt, and much of the joy of looking is in interpreting it for yourself. Of course some art has a clarity and vision which it is difficult NOT to see, whereas other works have a more poetic quality and are open to interpretation.

Fortunately for those of us inclined to project, Goya's Black Paintings are famously vague and their gloom can be imbued with meaning by the eye of the beholder. Whilst clearly a pessimistic view of humanity, The Pilgrimage to San Isidro may (or may not) have been a reflection on mechanical worship and blind superstition. But viewed from the present, the work could be seen as a far-reaching prophecy fulfilled, as the snaking length of humanity is led off by any number or malign and cynical Pied Pipers.

Are the crowds making their way to Waterstones, perhaps, for a signed copy of Katie Price's new literary outpouring?
Or perhaps they've read the learned and glowing reviews of Tracey Emin's culturally ground-breaking exhibition? (Read Shaz on Tray)
But then again it could simply be the crush for today's special offer or novelty item, which is guaranteed to take your mind off your empty existence...until the next day's novelty item, which is guaranteed to take your mind off your empty existence...(until...).

No matter what the finer details. The general shape of the metaphor handed down from the walls of La Qunita del Sordo would appear to be clear and present: people are rarely so enslaved, endangered or threatening as when they fall mutely into step with the mob....

Pretty it ain't.
Darkly prophetic it might be.
Art or the highest significance it most definitely is, was and always will be.

Vanity, stupidity and superstition are recurring threads in the darkness and light of Goya's etchings and human barbarity rears its gruesome head in the Disasters of War, which were wrought when the French invaded Spain in 1807, and the ensuing war and famine.

In the set of 22 Los Disparates, Goya's unfailing eye for life's detail takes on more nightmarish qualities, and many people reared on Painter X and the fantasy art of the present are staggered by the amount of work Goya put into dressing his dark visions.

My first meeting with Goya was on the bookshelves of Farnworth Library at the end of my Nana's street, where I first set eyes on his Naked Maja. That visit was with my ma when I was at Primary School. But the Naked Maja wasn't for letting go and she kept luring me back for another sneaky peak whenever I was at Nan's for tea.
A more significant encounter with Francisco de Goya occurred at the Museo del Prado, in the room which houses the Black Paintings, when the buds of boyish curiosity had been uprated to a different type of mild euphoria.
I wrote in my notebook at the time: 'Want to see talent? Go and see Goya's Black Paintings. If you are alive where it matters, there's a good chance you'll be touched permanently. Walking into that room was like coming home. Exhilaration.'
My notebook also reminds me that the euphoria was short lived.
'But stand still and note the movement around you. Everyone moving, moving, moving. Looking, yet seeing nothing. The Human Condition. Still got your copy of HELLO magazine to hand?'
At one moment I felt privileged to be sharing a room with the darkest efforts of the great Goya, who had the rare ability to turn out supreme work in pretty much any medium, with little compromise to his skills or his artistic need to illustrate without undue flattery. And in the next moment I was finding dark prophecy in the dark paintings on the walls and its fulfillment all around. Goya's dark mood is easily caught. Converted to canvas in 1873, fifty years after Goya's death, the Black Paintings were originally murals, painted onto the walls of Goya's Madrid home, La Quinta del Sordo and The Pilgrimage to San Isidro was given pride of place on one of the main downstairs walls, facing the similarly infected Witches Sabbath. The darkness Goya created would've surrounded him day and night: this was no fleeting fancy. Unless the intellectual pretensions flutter to deceive, or it suffers from the Tracy Syndrome (which requires the viewer to work hard to make up for the lack of talent and vision), a work of art is not something that necessarily needs to be learnt, and much of the joy of looking is in interpreting it for yourself. Of course some art has a clarity and vision which it is difficult NOT to see, whereas other works have a more poetic quality and are open to interpretation.

Fortunately for those of us inclined to project, Goya's Black Paintings are famously vague and their gloom can be imbued with meaning by the eye of the beholder. Whilst clearly a pessimistic view of humanity, The Pilgrimage to San Isidro may (or may not) have been a reflection on mechanical worship and blind superstition. But viewed from the present, the work could be seen as a far-reaching prophecy fulfilled, as the snaking length of humanity is led off by any number or malign and cynical Pied Pipers.

Are the crowds making their way to Waterstones, perhaps, for a signed copy of Katie Price's new literary outpouring?
Or perhaps they've read the learned and glowing reviews of Tracey Emin's culturally ground-breaking exhibition? (Read Shaz on Tray)
But then again it could simply be the crush for today's special offer or novelty item, which is guaranteed to take your mind off your empty existence...until the next day's novelty item, which is guaranteed to take your mind off your empty existence...(until...).

No matter what the finer details. The general shape of the metaphor handed down from the walls of La Qunita del Sordo would appear to be clear and present: people are rarely so enslaved, endangered or threatening as when they fall mutely into step with the mob....

Pretty it ain't.
Darkly prophetic it might be.
Art or the highest significance it most definitely is, was and always will be.