Late in his life, Francisco de Goya created La Riña. The painting shows two men, stuck in muck and mire, attempting to beat each other with clubs.
What is stunning about the composition of this one of his 14 black paintings is how it contrasts the brutality of the antagonists with the staggering, sectionalized beauty of the landscape they inhabit.
When you study a mural, what do you attend to? Much depends on what you wish to encounter.
I have been in galleries where some people give towering art little time, while others spend 30 minutes before the same vivid creation.
One might say such choices depend on individuals’ education and experience, and you might be right. Or perhaps the day could not encompass all the museum’s magnificent holdings.
But let’s think about this Goya canvas differently—darkness and light, richness of color, too. The men, armed with cudgels, face off, focused on nothing but each other.
Imagine you could remove the fighters from the picture and step into a fast drive through the countryside. Wouldn’t you miss the staggering beauty of nature’s gift?
Much depends on what one wishes to find, what one doesn’t, what one treasures, and what horrifies one to the point of tears.
Humanity lives in a tension between enlightenment and ignorance, necessity and flight, courage and cowardness, and happiness and unhappiness.
These individuals, too, do not recognize the sublimity of their surroundings or value it enough.
The risk includes the destruction of irreplaceable humans and a paradise vulnerable to erasure.
Steve Schmidt, a man of no small intelligence and insight, reminded us this week:
Each generation receives civilization on loan. Its obligates us to preserve it, strengthen it, and pass it forward.
Consider this an opportunity.
Yours and mine.
I appreciated this piece, especially the way you use Goya’s painting to ask what we choose to see. I wonder whether part of the challenge is learning to look away from the fight without looking away from the *consequences* of the fight. That seems to require both attention and restraint: an ability to recognize what is being damaged, while refusing to let destruction become the entire landscape.
Excellent point, Erin. There are many ways to address what we comprehend and absorb of the world, how we manage living with it, without it, or ignoring it. We can only see so much and do so much. Our interpretations of experiences are crucial, as well. The story of our lives and of the world in our time depends on choices great and small. Thank you, Erin.
I agree that we see what we choose to see or what we seek to find in an image. My post today deals with this exact concept and an artist who understood this.
Much appreciated, Beth. I am impressed with your post on our synchronistic subject matter. A lovely and engaging post on your behalf.
Once said that Goya is one of my most cherished and venerated painters, Stendhal syndrome alert! and that I was lucky enough to attend two exhibitions of his paintings and drawings (Beyeler Gallery in Basel, Switzerland, and Palazzo Reale in Milano), the powerful intensely colorful beauty of the landscape in this painting made me immediately and profoundly captive.
Such strong a feeling that made me not perceive the brutality of the two human beings ready to fight.
Like Beauty had already won, even before the first stab.
(Strange, as Goya is one of the painters who better expressed violence, madness, vile, inhumane behaviors on canvas or paper.)
That you have seen the Goya paintings of his late period makes me jealous, Micaela! I am sure the richness of the color when seeing them in person is a far cry from what the internet offers.
It is interesting that the landscape captured you and beauty won. That, too, would make the attendance at the exhibitions an extraordinary experience. May you always be in a place where beauty wins, my dear friend!
I believe we all respond to art differently. What one chooses to see in a painting may well indicate what we value more in life, as you suggest.
I imagine some of it might be built in and other aspects reflect who we have become in living. Surely the two men in the Goya painting are separated from the beauty of the surroundings, at least for a time. Or perhaps it is their crudeness and insensitivity to beauty that has contributed to their penchant for battle.
Even these interpretations probably tell you something how I see the world. Thank you for your thoughts, Rosaliene.
Thank you, Dr. Stein, for the introduction to this powerful piece of art…new to me. Your words here are magnificent:
“Humanity lives in a tension between enlightenment and ignorance, necessity and flight, courage and cowardness, and happiness and unhappiness.”
You described the duality expertly. Well said! And the fight continues! 💝
The fight indeed, Vicki, as represented by the two men in the painting. Thank you for your kind words. As you note, life is complicated, no matter the words we use to describe it. But then there is beauty…
That is the powerful statement that really struck me as well. Yes, the fight continues. Thank you, Dr. Stein!