Art is the Solution

Disparate Femenino Source: Museo Prado If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably know that Francisco Goya is my favorite artist. Goya is famous for his many prints, and his print series Los Disparates is perhaps his most enigmatic and interesting of all the series he produced. Disparate Femenino (which translates as Feminine Folly ) is usually considered to be the first print in this series. It depicts a group of women tossing two dolls in the air while a man and a donkey lay in the blanket. The print is similar to a tapestry cartoon (a painting created as a model for a textile tapestry) that Goya created nearly twenty years before. The tapestry cartoon, entitled The Straw Manikin , depicts four women tossing a manikin in a blanket, referencing a popular carnival game. However, there are deeper implications here. As the Prado Museum notes, “its carnival origins are visible in the use of masks and joking, but the blanket-tossing of a doll is used he...

Riddle of Fear Source: Museo del Prado I’ve written many posts about the work of Francisco Goya on this blog. Goya, who is one of my favorite artists, is well known as a member of the enlightenment movement. His work can often be interpreted as social commentary, highlighting the ills of contemporary Spanish society. However, his work also contains a surreal, fantastical streak that is tinged by darkness. Riddle of Fear ( Disparate de Miedo in Spanish) is a good example of this element of Goya’s catalogue. This enigmatic print is one of the most famous of Goya’s Los Disparates series, which was never published during his lifetime. As a series, Los Disparates , which translates to the Follies , are famously difficult to interpret. According to my research , art historians traditionally read the follies as interpretations of Spanish proverbs or carnival scenes. However, as art historian Douglas Cushing suggests, I believe it’s not strictly necessary to assign a definitive inte...