O Goya. You've haunted me most of my life in one way or another. I recall, as a little mite, reading all about your legendary appetite for prostitutes and your frequent bouts of venereal disease. The latter seemed to live in your body almost metonymically with the social and political changes of your time. It was wonderfully romantic to think of you straddling feudalism and the Enlightenment, your eyes growing dimmer as the progress heralded by Napoleon spread across the land. There are endless tomes on his work. Of those I've read, the one I'm actually fond of is "The Double Life of Francisco de Goya" a horribly trashy little book full of gossip that lit up the dull days of my early adolescence. Although it's rather dubious, I still prefer it to Robert Hughes' celebrated but rather pompous take on things. The key to this is simple. His work is profound, so you don't need to say much in that direction. It's work that pisses on speech, particularly grand speech. In fact, the relationship between his pictures and words is fundamentally excruciating. His use of titles and texts is entirely ambiguous and often seems morbid and ironic, often running entirely counter to the highly humane readings his work is given. However outraged his work might be, it's tinged entirely with misanthropy and pessimism.
