Goya in the Parisian Rain

At moments it might seem debatable that any city, even Paris, can remain beautiful under the black shadow of an umbrella. The hottest July in history has given way to what is likely to be the coldest recorded August—Parisians brought out their winter coats yesterday in mid-summer. If you want to get away from the gloom of global warming and this new century’s many wars go and see Goya. The Mairie du 5^e Arrodnissement directly across the Panthéon houses not just the offices of the town hall but a fabulous Seurat inspired wall mural of the Tuileries à La Grande Jatte by a painter whose name I could not decipher. They also have on exhibit, until the 15^th of October, Goya’s L’œuvre Gravée. For anyone who caught Goethe’s collection of Goya’s at the Frick this is a comprehensive extension of his small format works.

These etchings on engravings include a selection of portraits of political dignitaries, illustrated proverbs many of which are idiomatic and need some reflection, and his rarely seen work on the French invasion of Spain by Napoléon. Goya let’s the calamities of the war speak for themselves. In front of his illustrations of its horrors and atrocities we can step out of our times to find a universal perspective outside of history and reflect in a new way on what we witness today. Goya recorded the famine and civil suffering that went in hand with the war as well but a vast number of the works present are direct reports from the battlefield. A pile of dead bodies with casualties on both sides is simply labeled We are born for this. One of Goya’s detractors said that it would be better if Goya left stains of paint and didn’t try to make faces out of them. In the haunting old women and men and the suffering of all ages on display at 21 Place du Panthéon no observation could seem less lacking in insight.

The exhibition also has a short series of Goya’s works devoted to bull-fighting, a wonderful opportunity to examine pieces that in my view directly inspired Manet. While Manet’s admiration of the Spanish masters and his travels to Spain are well known, in Goya’s bullfight series you can find the Goya’s Manet used as the reference frame for his bullfight painting that hangs in the Frick. The same low arena wall, the same experience of being inside the ring. There is another Goya that shows some people on a balcony, Manet, I have no doubt, painted his Orsay painting of his step son and wife in the balcony window in direct homage to this one.