Film 8: Goya/Hughes

Q1: Robert Hughes is an Australian born art critic, writer, and television documentary maker who lives in New York since 1970. He was educated at St. Ignatius' College and attended the University of Sydney where he studied art and architecture. He has been published in many articles such as Time Magazine, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, etc.

 

Q2. In this painting Goya is painting himself, some what facing a dark time in his life. He seems a little disturbed or confused on to what is going on around him in his life. He is searching for meaning in his life. It seems like Goya is obssessed with corruptedness and possibly evil. Some of paintings depict certain facial expressions of evilness and danger.

In his portrait of himself he is wearing a bull fighting jacket which shows a "declaration of toughness" according to Hughes. Goya is trying to link that there is common trait that we in the present have in common with our ancestors in the past. Referring to his bull fighter jacket, people in the 60's wore black leather jackets because it gives a symbol and representation that they are "tough" by wearing those jackets.

In this painting to the right it looks like he is painting someone that is evil, looks like he is swallowing a human.











Q3.  So far from what we have covered almost of the stories we have covered represent some kind of symbolicism, the French Revolution, mysteries or real life stories. Others seem to go off of inspiration and things that happen around them. Or they use props from things like pages of an old encyclopedia, for example: our Art professor likes to use blown up pictures of images or words from an encyclopedia. They all are correlated in one way or another, and its to show us that we do have some kind of common connection between us and our ancestors from the past. The best storyteller I would choose would be Simon Schama, he has a very intersting way of telling his stories. He takes a seriousness in telling his knowledge of Art. He likes mystery, and mystery is one of my favorite subjects. I like to be able to solve a good mystery. Even as a kid I loved to play the game clue. I often think life is like a game of clue, you solve a piece of the puzzle and another door to aother puzzle opens, and the pattern repeats.

Question for open discussion: Why is Robert Hughes so intrigued and puzzeld by Goya?