Monday, February 4, 2008
The Other Robert Hughes and a Favorite Artist
Goya, Crazy Like a Genius is the film counterpart to Australian art critic's biography of this Spanish artist. Goya fascinated Hughes for decades, but he did not attempt to write about him substantially until the artist's imagery haunted him during his coma and extensive hospital stay after a major autombile accident in the late nineties.
One of Hughes' key thesis in the film is that although Goya lived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he is modern, unflinchingly looking into the future of what will come. "He is one of us."
One of the first portraits he breaks down is a 1792 self-portrait where he paints himself wearing a bull-fighters jacket. Hughes says he identifies the danger of the artist with that of the matador in the corrida. And it makes a kind of fashion statement of toughness "like an artist wearing a leather jacket in the sixties."
Some of the best summaries of Goya's work comes from an intercut interview with New York artist Leon Golub. Golub says Goya was born on the wrong side of the world but was tough and smart enough to play the world's game. "Yet he was also a kind of rough character all over the place" you can't get you hand on him. He and Hughes agreed his is kind of like a dog that bites. It is from the interview Golub also gives the film its title. In regards to the final, disturbing paintings from Goya's deaf world "He's crazy like a Genius. He's absolutely in control. He's out of control and in control. We can't separate the two with him."
It is in part the contrast and journey of Goya, or the land of Goya, as Hughes terms it that continues to provide interest for seventy five minutes. He was court painter, well-patroned. He acted as a kind of precursor to the photojournalist depicting scenes of war. He satirized class and conditions in Spain and celebrated the bullfight. And finally, created dark recessed imagery that still has the ability to startle and impress.
Sure, there are some cheesy moments for BBC television like Hughes being tortured by intercut Goya demons in a reenactment of his infirmity or somewhat awkwardly asking simple questions in Spanish to the guide at Goya's birthplace, but there is no doubt that there is significant lifetime of interest and fascination in the topic for Hughes. This is apparent when he comments on how the naked Maja could have a touch more pink on the right nipple and how he wishes he could pop into the painting "like a bee getting into a peony and have a wonderful afternoon." But also evident in his explanations of Goya's demons, particularly in the latter "black paintings" that seem to be exceptionally familiar to the artist, like he has breakfast with him.
The concept of Goya as modern was not a hard sell for me. Last Spring I was able to move up and down the spiral of the Guggenheim with a comparative show of Spanish painting called Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso. Velazquez, El Greco and Goya were hung next to Dalis and Picassos in those small alcoves of the museum to illustrate treatments of theme and imply a kind of evolution. The 400 years covered in the show seemed very compressed with the coil of the Guggenheim linking it together like some kind of artistic strand of DNA.
And lastly, have you ever noticed how much Brendan Gleeson and Robert Hughes resemble each other?
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:49 PM
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