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Rating: When writing a review, one should attempt to express a position, if not original since one is never alone in discussing something, which is good and right, at least on a personal level, emotions et similia, so as to make the writing not entirely similar to a boring didactic treatise. Unfortunately, when talking about a work with almost two hundred years of history, you have behind you not only just as many years of comments and criticisms but also of emotional expressions that statistically make one's own presentation comparable to many others, older and, probably, more intelligent. There is always the possibility of wanting to distance oneself at all costs from what is a common and accepted line, but the risk is to fall into easy and unnecessary provocative antics.
I say this because in this review of the "3 May 1808", oil on canvas painted by Goya in 1814 and now exhibited at the Prado in Madrid, you will read things that everyone knows very well, and which can already be found in encyclopedias and on the net, but also an idea so personal it seems a blasphemy on the level of Art History. To get this thought out of the way, I must make a distinction: in art, there are movements and there are definitions, often the latter are associated with the former but just as often the latter may exclude the former. The term "Expressionism" is usually used to indicate an artistic period that exploded in the first twenty years of the 20th century, but to give a definition, and I copy it from one found online that I liked, expressionist is something that "focuses on a sharp subjective feeling rather than on objective observation". That said, everyone agrees that a couple of artists, whom I won't mention, guess them, between the 15th and 17th centuries were expressionists before the "hard and pure Expressionism", but, to my memory, no one has ever compared the great Goya, or one of his works, to the term: I do it and if you have patience over the next few lines, perhaps, I will be able to explain this idea of mine.
Rarely has painting ever reached such a dramatic level as that depicted in this painting; the scene is raw: it's dark, a group of French soldiers is about to shoot, after killing others present in the painting, unarmed civilians, probably arrested during the unrest the day before, to which Goya dedicated the "twin" "El dos de Mayo de 1808 en Madrid". A lamp illuminates the scene: on the right, the soldiers are painted from the side, concealing the expressions on their faces, in the middle, future condemned are taken in gestures of despair, on the left, the victims, facing, some bewildered, some proud, angry, fearless. The central figure, in a white shirt, is caught with his arms raised, offering, proudly, his chest to the executioners.
The strength of this painting is twofold: on one side, one is fascinated by the "photographic" and fierce description of an objective reality, the event, on the other, the subjectivity of the painter surprises. The evocative power with which he describes the scene recalls strongly pacifist sentiments, repudiating war and violence, but also patriotic, the Spanish people rebelling against the Napoleonic invader, the fervor of a passion born from the people, always the first victim of the powerful and usurpers. In this sense, Goya is not and does not want to be objective: he "throws out" a profound sense of dramatic disappointment that he feels as the soldiers, but in them is Napoleon himself, betray the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution and the promises of progress and revenge of fraternal equality among peoples. This is profoundly expressionist: that man, unarmed, in a white shirt expresses, in his proud demeanor, the deep horror that the artist felt and at the same time the defeat of all human and humanist ideals.
Needless to say, here Goya's technique is at its peak: the confident brushstroke reinforces his grotesque skills and the play of light and shadow will influence all painting for the next 150 years; moreover, from this painting onwards, although itself probably influenced by a work a few years earlier by Jacques-Louis David, which I will talk about, albeit indirectly, in another review, war, in painting, will no longer be treated only from a celebratory and heroic point of view but also to highlight its horror and negativity: ask Picasso, for example.
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