Swallow it, dog (1799)

Baudelaire says something similar regarding Francisco Goya’s Caprichos (1799) which contain “the gaiety and vivacity of Spanish satire from the good old days of Cervantes” but with “a far more modern spirit, or at least one that has been far more sought after in modern times: I mean a love of the ungraspable, a feeling for violent contrasts, for the blank horrors of nature, and for human countenances weirdly brutalized by circumstances…light and dark play across all these grotesque horrors; and what a singular kind of playfulness!” (183–184). I like to say you don’t laugh at the grotesque without expecting to be emotionally backhanded across the room.  Flannery O’Connor believed that the violence associated with this aesthetic is intrinsic to its very nature because of “the discrepancies that it seeks to combine” (43). Writers and artists of the grotesque “use the concrete in a more drastic way” because in their work the “distances” which “are so great” become collapsed (42).

Sad presentiments of what must come to pass, no. 1

Now, what would this rupture look like for a meta-infused intellectual culture, one that is so aware of its ironic, mediated existence that they’ve turned humanism into its own plasticized idol, one to be worshiped at every gallery walk and literature reading? You would need a particular kind of violence to collapse those boundaries, mute the mind for only a few moments–enough to allow a rebooting of sorts. You would also need to pick an idol that could hold the weight of such an assault.  Goya’s Disasters of War has long been hailed as the sacrosanct emblem of anti-war sentiment. Goya created the prints sometime between 1810–20, but they were not published during his lifetime. The edition Jake and Dinos Chapman bought in 2001 were made from the artist’s original plates in 1937 as a protest against the brutalities of fascism during the Spanish Civil War. The brothers’ “rectification” of the 82 prints, aptly named Insult to Injury, made its first appearance in a 2003 show called The Rape of Creativity at the Modern Art Oxford (Jones). It drew widespread criticism for “vandalizing” and “defacing” an Old Master’s work while simultaneously garnering praise for bringing to light the true horrors of war. These “enfants terribles of the art world,” continued to be labeled as either adolescent narcissists or the champions of humanism. Very few critics seem to actually engage with Insult to Injury on a deeper, analytical level which the work seems to warrant, given the time it must have taken to accomplish it.

Jake and Dinos Chapman Insult to Injury 2003 Francisco de Goya ‘Disasters of War’ Portfolio of eighty etchings reworked and improved. Each: 14 9/16 x 18 1/2 in. (37 x 47 cm) (framed) Paper size: 11 1/8 x 15 in. (28.3 x 38.1 cm). Credit Photo: Stephen White, Courtesy White Cube

“‘We always had the intention of rectifying it, to take that nice word from The Shining, when the butler’s trying to encourage Jack Nicholson to kill his family — to rectify the situation,’” Jake said in an interview with The Guardian in 2003 (Jones). Every review or critique I read says the brothers had superimposed the heads of puppies or clowns onto the victims of war. Taken as such, then the prints become something of a “low joke,” to borrow a phrase from O’Connor. But take a closer look at those heads sutured onto the bodies of the broken, and you can see how the Chapmans rectified the prints so they fall more in line with the monstrous power of Goya’s Caprichos. The creature in Sad presentiments (1) seems to have been cross bred with skull, mouse, and a clown on the verge of a nervous breakdown as he waits and listens for a rescue that will never come. The dark rimmed eyes, wide in horror, are undercut by the clown nose and big ears. We do not know which part of his face to believe, or where to keep our focus.

To the cemetery (no. 56)

Antonio Lazaro-Reboll asserts that  in the Caprichos, “Goya’s alternative accounts of the body, those monstrous and grotesque bodies, pose a challenge to the singular, universal model of the Enlightenment’s self-determined individual, and seemed to me instrumental in bringing back into play Reason’s underside, its demonized other” (113). The Chapmans’ reworkings of The Disasters of War do indeed “fix” them of the easy binary they created, despite their horrific content. The subjects in most of the original prints are human–sometimes they draw closer to the monstrous, but not enough to warrant the frustration of narrative closure we experience when viewing the Caprichos.

Jake and Dinos Chapman Insult to Injury 2003 Francisco de Goya ‘Disasters of War’ Portfolio of eighty etchings reworked and improved. Each: 14 9/16 x 18 1/2 in. (37 x 47 cm) (framed) Paper size: 11 1/8 x 15 in. (28.3 x 38.1 cm). Credit Photo: Stephen White, Courtesy White Cube

Goya’s To the Cemetery (56) is almost banal in its representation of how the sick are carried off, compared to the plates preceding and following it, which show more skeletal humans hanging on to the last few hours of life.  It is a portrayal of the other kinds of slow, undignified dying that happen during war time. In the new version, the subject is frighteningly alive and takes on the guise of one driven to utter madness by the carnivalesque brutality they’ve endured. The faint lines between eyes and eyebrows suggest that even this possible “clown” is wearing–or perhaps was forced to wear–a mask, the toothy grin stretched to the point of pain. We have no idea if they are dead or about to be buried alive.

What more can one do (no.33)

Plates 38 (Barbarians!) and 33 (What more can one do?) come in a series that show victims hanging, impaled, or being drawn and quartered on a tree. Others are tied to wooden posts, awaiting execution. In Barbarians, Goya chose to hide the face of this victim–we don’t have to see the last moments of terror etched on his face as he waits for the shot to be fired. We can rest in our momentary horror of such atrocities (silently grateful that we will never have to experience such barbarisms). Plate 33 is more naked in its brutality, yet here the man seems to be unconscious or dead. His hands are only slightly clenched, as one might do when sleeping.  The feeling of complete disgust comes when I see what is almost a smile on one of the men’s faces–the ambiguous enjoyment they got out of not only conquering, but also humiliating their enemy.

Jake and Dinos Chapman Insult to Injury 2003 Francisco de Goya ‘Disasters of War’ Portfolio of eighty etchings reworked and improved. Each: 14 9/16 x 18 1/2 in. (37 x 47 cm) (framed) Paper size: 11 1/8 x 15 in. (28.3 x 38.1 cm). Credit Photo: Stephen White, Courtesy White Cube

The Chapmans drew hybrid faces on each victim so that they are now caught between human and animal, tragically awake, forever bound and waiting to die.  Goya hasn’t been exorcised from the Disasters of War so much as haunted by the ghosts of Pennywise the clown. And that is the very vehicle of the grotesque–the intersection of high and low, humor and horror–to collapse that which critics would dismiss as mere vandalism and silliness even as it fixes our gaze. Drawing over Goya’s print was the only kind of violence, perhaps, that the art community could still feel, could still register as being very personal. Because this aesthetic naturally resists closure, the viewer is denied the catharsis expected in our queasy relationship with the humanities. Flannery O’Connor argued that society suffered from a “hazy compassion” that had forgotten the price of redemption and restoration (48). The grotesque reminds us that perhaps, as Lazaro-Reboll argues, the lofty ideals of reason and humanism are themselves social constructs that still fail to address the deeper wounds of a post-modern society. Certainly  plate 33 (What more can one do?), with its castrated male victim, now troubles me even more  in light of reports about growing incidents of male rape in different parts of the world.

Jake and Dinos Chapman Insult to Injury 2003 Francisco de Goya ‘Disasters of War’ Portfolio of eighty etchings reworked and improved. Each: 14 9/16 x 18 1/2 in. (37 x 47 cm) (framed) Paper size: 11 1/8 x 15 in. (28.3 x 38.1 cm) Credit Photo: Stephen White, Courtesy White Cube

Were the Chapman brothers manipulating Goya’s prints to elicit such a response from the viewer?  I’m not sure that artists and writers use the grotesque so much as it uses them to bring a meta-critical society to its knees. Given their rather monstrous oeuvre, I would say that the brothers have a rather long-standing partnership with this wondrous beastie. Put Bosch, Bruegel, Hitler, and Joel Peter Witkin in a room and give them nothing but toy soldiers to play with, and you have Hell (1999)–which burned when the Saatchi warehouse caught on fire–and Fucking Hell, 2008, which they made to replace it. Their 2005 Like a Dog Returns to Its Vomit  is a “reworking” of Goya’s Caprichos, much like the Disasters of War. Each exhibit unleashes the rhetorical power of pathos to momentarily shut down the logic–not to unveil any great truth–that is not the grotesque’s job. It is what Francis Connelly calls a “boundary creature,” (3) and as such, it only exists to playfully distort and deform societal constructs. I argue that these cultural paradigms create demarcating systems where the “other” is damned in the name of  politics, aesthetics, religion, economics, class, ethnicity–call out the boundary, the grotesque will be there. Insult to Injury throws its victims into the realm of the monstrous, thereby rupturing the cathartic haunt I think most viewers have when looking at the Disaster of War.  Because when viewing art about such atrocities, you don’t get to walk away without a wound.

Visit the Chapman Brothers’ website to see more of their work.

Works Cited

Connelly, Francis. “Introduction.” Modern Art and the Grotesque. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.

Baudelaire, Charles. The Mirror of Art. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956.

Harpham, Geoffrey Galt. On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982.

Jones, Jonathan. “Look What We Did.” Guardian.co.uk. the Guardian. 30 March 2003. Web. February 15 2011.

Lazaro-Reboll, “Counter-rational reason: Goya’s instrumental negotiations of flesh and world.” European Ideas. 30 (2004) 109–119.

O’Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969.

The post Necessary Violence: The Rectification of Goya by the Chapman Brothers appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.

When people use the term “grotesque,” they often mean many different things: bizarre, monstrous, unsightly, weird, nightmarish, or gross. But if there was one specific characteristic that I would wish for you to take away from this article, it is this: the grotesque is out to get you. Well, you and me. All of us. In that sense, it’s an equal-opportunity aesthetic, which is why I love to teach its rhetorical value in a postmodern, apocalyptic-loving society such as ours.

Take, for instance, Goya’s Caprichos, which were completed in 1799 and then quickly hidden from public view. Riddled with ambiguity, darkness, humor and horror, these aquatint etchings (80 total) resist meaning, keeping our reason forever unsatiated in its attempt to master and subdue what is “unknown” concerning these works. Instead, our emotions are pulled, pushed away, invited into horror while simultaneously making us smile. Even laugh. These paradoxes are the very essence of the grotesque. According to Geoffrey Halt Harpham and other theorists, the grotesque is a unique operation (I don’t want to use the word genre because that implies something rather static or “fixed”). Interacting with the grotesque causes the viewer/reader’s mind to shut down in order to allow a “temporary reign of the senses” that pushes the spectator into a new paradigm shift. We like our paradigms. They usually help us make sense of the chaos in the world—but often at a cost of marginalizing others. The grotesque plays on that boundary, momentarily letting the chaos (and the Other) back in. For this reason, what is grotesque for one person may not be for another since we all have different paradigms. The same could be said for cultures.

A Gift for the Master, plate 47

Goya’s Caprichos critique the failings of a society that believed in the power of the Enlightenment. During this period when reason and knowledge was supposedly ridding the world of all sin, Goya saw his country ripped apart by war and beleaguered by domestic atrocities that education could not undo—political greed, child abuse, and superstitious rituals.  Two aquatints, A Gift for the Master (plate 47) and There is Plenty to Suck (plate 45), deal with the latter in such a way as to possibly fall into the grotesque. In A Gift for the Master, an old woman nuzzles an armless child that is standing in an impossible position. It looks more like a doll, but the expression on its face is one of horror or shock, thereby putting it back into the human category. The other hunchbacked woman is beseeching some figure off screen—is the bright light that shines upon her emanating from this being which demands a child sacrifice?  The others around her are gathered in shadow, a dark face huddles down near the baby, hands gathered in hungry glee, or perhaps prayer?

The same kind of funny viciousness can be found in There Is Plenty to Suck (I use the term loosely here, some of you may see these pictures and laugh; others might be totally disgusted and see nothing humorous about them). The old women behind the basket are barely even human with an animal-like snout and protruding teeth. The children in the basket look like dolls as well because of their size and positioning—one can’t physical have a “basket of babies” and yet we see enough of real emotion on their faces to feel a strange pity for these tiny beings that are both real and not real. Goya’s title, however, is what clinches the grotesque, since it plays off the idea that there are plenty of children to feed the hungry instead of there being plenty of nursing mothers for the children.Yet having that basket of babies can be rather fun if you say it out loud—and there lies some of the humor in the Caprichos.

Now, how is this different from Saturn Devouring His Son (1821–23), one of Goya’s most famous paintings? I might argue that here it is all delicious horror: the headless god/man with Saturn almost unhinging his mouth for another bite, his eyes wide with madness and his fingers digging deep into the back, ready to rip it apart. It is gothic terror at its best without any humor to impede or impale us on the immediacy of the moment (Harpham 16). Yet it lacks that deeper grotesque punch since the figure Saturn is holding seems more like a fully formed man than a baby.

Love Bite (2002)

Laurie Lipton’s Love Bite (2002) helps combine the brutality of Saturn with the bizarre humor of the Caprichos. At first all you might notice is the woman’s wide-opened mouth—like she is about to bite into the juiciest Red Delicious apple (perhaps Granny Smith might be a more apt choice). But the little arms outstretched in such a way that they might have been broken taps into our subconscious reservoir about every child abuse story we’ve ever heard to erase any humor—broken bones, baby shaking, bite marks. We are catapulted into a sense of horror until we look more closely at that baby. Much like Goya’s children, it is much too small to be real, and the arms are in an almost impossible position. The title Love Bite would seem completely out of sync except for the  heart-shaped earrings this grandmother sports, and the drool that escapes her mouth in anticipation.

Here text and title have a little fête of their own that destabilizes our interaction with the picture—even if a laugh momentarily escapes us, it is replaced with a gasp (I hear these two sounds often when I flash the image up on a screen for my students).  Lipton’s drawing takes away the communal aspect found in Goya’s Caprichos, but she adds something more vital, more indicting by displaying the relish with which the grandmother partakes her meal. Could we perhaps see her representing a society that has taken their fill of the earth’s resources and money, while telling a younger generation that they will need to “fix it”? Could we be the monsters which partake in this subtle, grotesque devouring?

Until Death, Plate 55

Baudelaire argues that “Goya’s great merit consists in his having created a credible form of the monstrous. His monsters are born viable, harmonious. No one has ventured further than he in the direction of the possible absurd. All the distortions, those bestial faces, those diabolic grimaces of his are impregnated with humanity. It would be hard to condemn them, so great is the analogy and harmony between all the parts of their being. In a word, the line of suture, the point of junction between the real and the fantastic is impossible to grasp” (185–586). This “goblin self” that the grotesque tries to unmask is nowhere more present than in the mirror, that bizarre “not me/me” reflection we battle with every day. Goya’s Until Death (plate 55) playfully and painfully explores one woman’s self deception as she views herself in a new hat. Rather than accept age and the wisdom and productivity that can accompany it, she continues to throw herself into the reflection of what she wants, what she should be, while the young men and woman snicker (not even behind her back, but right there, where she can see it).

Mirror Mirror (2002)

Lipton’s Mirror Mirror (2002) removes the audience and allows the mirror to endlessly mock the woman’s loss of youth. The teddy is too tight, a single drip is about to fall from the faucet—it is the beginning of a never-ending end (at least, according to a society that only values youth). While Mirror Mirror plays directly off the Caprichos, it is Lipton’s Lies and Inconstancies (2002), that emphasizes the uncanny double-ness that the mirror unveils.

Lies and Inconstancies (2002)

In the reflection, we see a genderless face with closed eyes and cropped hair. A mask looks out to the world, but that too is genderless, snapped onto what might be a woman’s body, given the cellulite-ridden hips. But what about that muscular back? And what has cast that giant shadow, for certainly it cannot be that doppelganger standing there? Another claw-like appendage on the left reaches out to caress—or grab—the person’s elbow. The drawing is riddled in creepy ambiguity, further complicated by the love note that has fallen to the floor. Which image does the person present—the real and yet broken self or the goblin? And which, do we in turn, end up judging as the core of who they are? There’s an odd little lesson that the uncanny might be trying to bring to light. The next time you say “that person was such an ass” and have your poor cortisol levels rise to the boiling point, perhaps just ask if they were just showing their goblin mask today, because they, too, as Plato says, are fighting a hard battle.

For all of the transgressive violence found within the grotesque, I still argue that this aesthetic is fueled ultimately by a hunger for redemption and love. Some might find these images shocking, violent, tasteless, or tragically funny. That is the nature of the grotesque—it operates upon your paradigm: where no paradigm exists, there is no grotesque. The only boundaries it likes to play on are those that keep a nice, clean line between “us” and the marginalized “other.”

To view more of Laurie Lipton’s work: http://www.laurielipton.com/.

To view Goya’s Caprichos: http://www.wesleyan.edu/dac/coll/grps/goya/goya_intro.html

Works Cited:

Baudelaire, Charles. The Mirror of Art. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1956.

Green, Tom. “Laurie Lipton: Queen of Bones,” Dangerous Ink 2 (2009): 17–23.

Goya, Francisco. Saturn Devouring One of His Children, 1821–23.  Olga’s Gallery.

www.abcgallery.com. Jan 2012.

—. There is Plenty to Suck. 1799. http://www.franciscodegoya.net. Jan 2012.

—. Until Death. 1799. http://www.franciscodegoya.net. Jan 2012.

—. A Gift for the Master. 1799. Cleveland Museum of Art. http://www.clevelandart.org.

Jan 2012.

Harpham, Geoffrey Galt. On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art

and Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982

Lipton, Laurie. Lies and Inconstancies. 2002. Images used courtesy of the artist.

—. Love Bite. 2002.

—. Mirror Mirror, 2002.

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