Glorious Goya

>> The master overshadows Piranesi and the Chapman brothers at the MMFA

by SHOLEM KRISHTALKA

There are certain art historical opinions that might as well be established fact: reigning opinions about Goya, for example. Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) in his artistic brilliance, is regarded as the benchmark in the development of modern art history. His often nightmarish vision changed artistic consciousness and expression, and is still doing so. No one debates this point, probably because its truth is so readily in evidence, as can be seen at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' Piranesi--Goya--Chapman: Roma Fantastica & the Sleep of Reason: Works From the Fondazione Antonio Mazotta (until Jan. 27).

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) is in odd company here. The first three rooms are filled with Piranesi's Roma Fantastica prints, technically brilliant etchings of (often) imaginary ruins of the Roman Empire. However, these vast Roman vistas are processed through the Rococo penchant for grandiose ornamentation and are window dressing, pure decoration. Even the most nightmarish of Piranesi's work--his Imaginary Prisons series--succumbs to the Neoclassical embellishment that qualifies the Rococo.

And then there is Goya

Goya's work is the art equivalent of a body blow. The acuteness and expanse of his vision, his documentary power, and his grace and skill as an artist make his work devastatingly, frighteningly immediate. Los Caprichos reflect his contempt for the superstitious irrationalities of early 18th-century Spanish culture (Goya was a man of the Enlightenment). The Disastres de la Guerra document the guerrilla uprising of the Spanish against Napoleonic occupation, and the Disparates are allegorical depictions of human folly.

What emerges is a testimony to the extremes of human nature. Barbarous cruelty pervades these images, as French soldiers eagerly rape Spanish peasantry ("They Don't Like It"), Spanish villagers torture the naked body of a Frenchman ("Rabble"), and castrated, decapitated corpses hang from trees ("Great Deeds! Against the Dead!"). Heroism also emerges: the legendary maid of Zaragossa singlehandedly defends her village with a French cannon ("What Courage!"). That these explicitly horrific images are beautifully executed makes Goya's vision all the more stunning.

The infamously controversial Chapman brothers' riff on Goya--their Disasters of War prints--round out the show. The prints (all untitled) are deliberately crudely drawn, crudely coloured, but generally not all that good--interesting, but not all that good. Despite their shallow crudity (swollen wet penises, anuses and vaginas abound), they evoke a fecal, puerile quality; they capture something of the bulimic nature of millennial culture. Their vision, however, given the present company, reveals itself as clumsy and immature. They are Piranesi, in reverse. He is all prettiness and no depth; they are all ugly shock, with nothing genuine behind it.