When Francisco Goya y Lucientes died in self-imposed exile in early 19th century France, people said he was mad. Really, he was just angry–an old man who had spent his last 35 years raging against sudden deafness and making etchings of wild-eyed mortals caught in the throes of insanity. Goya got his start, living as court painter, serving Spain’s weak-chinned Bourbon king.
Before moving on to rendering the life of his times, reared in the shadow the Inquisition, witness to Napoleon’s feats of hubris and brutality, Goya made no room for redemption in his two dimensional renderings of man’s inhumanity to man.
Guests:
Robert Hughes, art critic and author, most recently, of “Goya”