Goya: The Dark Side of War

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Goya: The Dark Side of War

Francisco Goya (1746-1828) earned himself a place in history and art through his work that clearly expresses the evolution witnessed in art following the political upheavals witnessed during his time. Indeed, he produced many pieces of artwork that covered an array of themes such as war and the suffering it caused, particularly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From lithographs to drawings, etchings, and oil paintings, his works were characterized by such intensity that only appeared to communicate and satisfy Goya’ artistic ambitions. More importantly, his works drew attention to another perspective of war that was hitherto uncommon among many people, mainly the perpetrators of violence during the political turmoil experienced during his time. He showed the dark side of war through his pieces that communicated the devastation and horror of armed conflict, contextual dehumanization, and the suffering as well as distress experienced by war victims. By and large, Goya used his artworks to denounce the consequences of war by compassionately, lucidly and uncompromisingly offering its consequences and depictions that gain relevance in the humanitarian goal of preventing suffering during armed conflict. This paper discusses Goya’s works in this light.

While Goya’s works might have been largely motivated by Spain’s war of independence that took place between 1808 and 1814, they nevertheless communicated the dark side of war in general (Baticle, 1994:2). The aforementioned armed conflict involved merciless fighting, ruthless repression, and a wide range of unspeakable horrors that in one way or another were captured in Goya’s art. As such, the artist’s work is relevant today, especially when considering the numerous armed conflicts going on around the globe.  By depicting the devastations of war and the suffering of its victims, Goya passes a strong message on the negative consequences of war and, therefore, the need to advance the humanitarian agenda’s objective of preventing this suffering. Imperatively, the richness of his work is pegged upon its focus on the human being. He depicts war in an engaging and lucid manner, with neither complacency nor prejudice, yet maintaining a level of sensitivity to the victims’ suffering. Since the work revolves around events he witnessed and experienced, it goes without saying that in many ways it is a reflection of his personal experience, which was not only painful, but also traumatic.

For the artist, one main negative side of war is the manner in which it affects the innocent. Goya’s The Disasters of War includes images of children and women who can be thought as representing vulnerability and innocence.  A good number of plates in this collection are quite brutal but not because they necessarily depict horrific carnage, rather because they depict rape which is not uncommon during war. Bouvier (2011:1116) observes that the plates (such as 7, 9, and 10) depicting rape show a woman in white who symbolizes “innocence and vulnerability”. Plate 7 is shown in Figure 1.Generally, the women and children in several of the plates appear helpless and at the mercy of their tormentors. Goya employs an array of artistic techniques like visual contrast to depict the agony that the victims are going through. While it remains debatable as to what extent Goya’s work is representational or rhetorical, the images in many pieces can be said to be representative or artistic personification of certain ideals. For instance, according to Glendinning (1977:26), plate 11 (see figure 2) shows a woman with bare breasts, perhaps considered convenient by Goya to represent goodness, beauty, and truth. The vulnerability of this woman and the helpless child here is a reminder that the people affected most by war are the innocent. War violates goodness, beauty, and truth, thus affecting/oppressing the innocent.

Figure 1: Plate 7

Source:  Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (2013)

Figure 2: Plate 11

Source: Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (2013)

Throughout his work, Goya depicts human anatomy meticulously and as such uses the human body as an avenue or vehicle for visualizing suffering and the manner in which unity and wholeness are lost during war. Being the realist he is, he marries different states and forms of passion to the body. Glendinning (1977:17) asserts that upon examining Goya’s work, a stark contrast can be noted between the body’s beauty and the extent its violation occurs. At the same time, the artist employs symbolism in the context of the body to depict the social and psychological consequences of war. In the words of Shaw (2003:485), “Goya’s interest is in the opening of the body, in the disruption of the skin as a metaphor for unity, wholeness, and completion”. Clearly, in war unity and wholeness are lost.

Still using the body metaphor, Goya depicts the dehumanization that is brought about by war in plate 37 (see figure 3) of the Disasters of War.  The background shows a soldier who has raised his sword and another pulling a corpse. In the foreground is a naked body impaled upon a dead tree. Arguably, nothing could be more dehumanizing than this. Giving his view on what Goya is depicting in this artwork, Tomlinson (1999:193) presents that the artist takes a representation of beauty and destroys it completely as if “to attest to the end of any faith in an ideal”. Thus, in this case, the dark side of war shown is the destruction it causes. While this destruction can be conceptualized in terms of injury (and death) of the human body, the use of this body in this context is metaphorical to represent the destruction in other spheres like social life. Even so, the dehumanization and suffering that war brings are not describable. As plate 37 shows, war can be so devastating that even the observance of human dignity (such as offering the dead decent burial) becomes problematic or dismissed altogether, a fact that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) (2009: par 2-4) agrees to. Goya could not do better in using the human body’s violation to show the implied dehumanization and suffering.

Figure 3: Plate 37

Source: Bourvier (2011)

In a word, Goya used his artworks to denounce the consequences of war by compassionately, lucidly and uncompromisingly offering its consequences and depictions that gain relevance in the humanitarian goal of preventing suffering during armed conflict.  The artist’s artworks depict the negative consequences of war and highlight how the innocent and vulnerable (mainly children and women) suffer most during war. Additionally, amid psychological and social consequences, unity and wholeness are lost during war, a point that Goya makes through his pieces, showing violation of the body and damage of the skin thereof. War brings about a lot of suffering and dehumanization, concepts that Goya communicates through use of the human body as a metaphor. Overall, Goya achieves the intended thematic purpose in his pieces.