Why create art?  Walter Benjamin wrote that it is only when the artist politicizes his art that he solves this most fundamental problem of art-making.

The question unsettles the modern mind; it would have offended the Renaissance soul and the Enlightened heart.  Until the modern era of reproducible art making there was a objective reason to create art, one that had conventional sanction behind its very existence: art served a pedagogical purpose where the artist was called in to marshal the public herd into a cult of ritual.   Though there existed other reasons to create art, they were all internal reasons, objective reason supported only one of those reasons, that of mutual advantage commercial exchange for expression and public salvation.  The buyer-critic allowed the seller-artist to bid up the price of the work only to the point of the natural constraint: neither party to the transaction could leech off the other for fear of assignation to a circle of hell.

With the reproducibility of art the deal was broken; the aura of authenticity and truth was left in tatters.  Neither the artist nor the buyer needed any one particular piece of art to stand for something eternal, and neither needed the other inelastically.  The buyer no longer ruled over his ant hill; the artist could no longer say something true since the concept of truth was run through with doubt.  Nothing specific could stand for something general.  In the modern era, this move to specificity has meant that, in and out of principle, nothing can refer to anything else without some argument.  It is the argument that is doing the work.  It is the choice to import meaning into the work ex poste facto that makes a caption, or an inscription the thing that aestheticizes politics.  A certain drawing of a hooded man can stand for anything at all, including a miserly member of the KKK, as well as a victim of torture in Abu Ghraib.  To make that choice ex ante, is to politicizes the work, and, for Benjamin, a move that, finally, naturally sorts craftsmanship from blind, and therefore manipulable, creed.

For Benjamin, then, being a Marxist art is tantamount to creating art for a social purpose, one that forces the artist to make aesthetic choices that are consistent with his prior beliefs on social justice and the plight– and flight– of modern man.

I want to say that this is a purely pragmatic move by Benjamin.  He admits that all artists are unbound and that pure expressionism is a choice as much as any other aesthetic choice.  However, he argues that expressionism that is given only to itself can be coralled by a autocrat to fit the populist purposes that lie underneath the surface of the artist’s expressionism.  He is afraid that, like the Futurists Boccioni and Marinetti, supposing art qua art a superior expression of one’s life over all other concerns is a step removed from thinking that adherence to any other action that takes that expression seriously, a worthwhile pursuit.  Hence, if an autocrat were to seek to show war as pure experience and that experience could unchain the artist in fits of pure expression, then war could be thought of as beautiful.  As the Futurists thought, movement and material could be placed at the feet of the war machine; the world, cleansed of all other order, would begin anew and this pure expression, where art was thought itself, would, at the limit approach the Platonic Ideal.

For Walter Benjamin, Marxism and its foundational base of political economic equality of welfare would under cut all that.  Marxist art would keep Fascist art at bay.  Nevertheless, I think there remains some doubt whether choosing to politicize art in this manner serves to do something greater than to only short circuit a move toward Fascist art.  Walter Benjamin demonstrated how a drawing in signs does a different thing than a painting in marks; how the way in which we conceive of a work determines the manner of its consumption.  He intimated the ways in which painting and photography that dealt with the real problems and real spaces in which contemporary men lived their hard fought lives was superior to action art that fed the inner genius.  Nevertheless, once the artist settles upon his politicized art, he find himself one step removed from the fundamental problem: though he has an answer to the question, why create art, he is still undone by the question of how to create art?  This question cannot be answered by relying on some deterministic concept of politicized aesthetics.

In a forthcoming piece, I’ll examine the ways in which two of my favorite artists of the 19th Century, Jacques Louis David and Francisco Goya dealt with this problem.  In answering this question, I’ll reach back to the fundamental question of why create art in the first place.  I’ll want to say that there remains sufficient doubt that the artist can determine ways to create art that somehow follows from Benjamin’s politicized Marxist aesthetic.  Hence, I’ll find both sets of answers to the questions wanting.  I will say, however that one of the two artist’s seems to be more compelling as a creator of objects that even now, sometimes, haunts my uneasy nightmares.

Pictorul privi cu desfătare la forma grațioasă și delicată, luminoasă, de parcă înlăuntrul ei ardea flacăra vieții iluminând carnea palidă ca o perlă. O umbră abia perceptibilă învăluia misterul feminității ei; lumina îi lăsa un punct luminos pe genunchii fin rotunjiți și, din nou, umbra se întindea în jos către piciorușele cu degetele lor delicate, trandafirii, ca de copil.

Femeia era mică, grațioasă și rafinată; o Venus spaniolă a cărei siluetă suplă, bine proporționată, era doar puțin împlinită, abia cât să dea o rotunjime formelor. Ochii ei de chihlimbar care străluceau cu viclenie aveau o privire tulburătoare; gura purta în colțurile ei grațioase atingerea trecătoare a unui zâmbet etern, pe obrajii, coatele și picioarele ei, tonul trandafiriu avea transparența și strălucirea umedă a celor scoici care își deschid culorile misterioase în adâncurile tăinuite ale mărilor.

—  Maja lui Goya. Maja Desnuda!

Fragment din romanul „Maja Desnuda” al lui Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Artist: Francisco Goya

Title: Winter ( The snowstorm )

Year: 1780

Wikipedia article on Francisco Goya

Artists Connect Series: Silvia Malagrino Connects with Francisco Goya
Saturday, November 7, 12-1 pm
The Art Institute of Chicago – Price Auditorium
Free with admission

Photography Conversations
Chicago Humanities Festival
Saturday, November 7, 1-2 pm
The Art Institute of Chicago – Fullerton Auditorium
Adults: $5.00, Educators & Students: FREE

Works by artists Liz Deschenes and Gaylen Gerber concentrate our attention on the process of looking. Deschenes, based in New York, and Gerber, based in Chicago, will discuss their new works specially prepared for the inaugural photography exhibition in the new Modern Wing of The Art Institute of Chicago. Matthew S. Witkovsky, Art Institute curator and chair of photography, moderates.

Tomorrow, many countries will celebrate Halloween. It’s not a Filipino nor a Christian celebration. But this “horrible holiday” is getting stronger and more popular each passing year in this country.

Already, television channels are showing various fright-related programs and movies since the beginning of the month. Many still remember how they await the Halloween episode of Noli de Castro’s popular and current affairs program, the now defunct Magandang Gabi, Bayan. And many businesses such as fastfoods, bookstores, and malls display halloween decors and other related paraphernalia.

Even my favorite source of news is into it! LOL!

The following article from Inquirer.net scared the $h!+ out of me. For one: it’s from a reliable and credible source (a Man of God)!

Exorcist’s tales: ‘Hair on my arms stood on end’

Walking toward the squat bungalow on a narrow street in Mandaluyong City, the priest wondered why his friend had requested “a lot of holy water” for the blessing.

“I thought I was going to bless a big house. It was only a bungalow surrounded by tall trees,” Fr. Armand Tangi said, remembering that rainy afternoon in 1984.

Tangi, then a freshman priest of the Society of St. Paul, saw nothing strange about the house that was inhabited only by his friend’s uncle.

But as soon as his friend (let’s call him Rey) opened the front door, “it was so cold even with all the windows closed,” Tangi said. “The hair on my arms stood on end.”

Tangi, Rey and their companions—two women, both office subordinates of the latter—walked in.

Looking around, the priest noted that there were no religious statues or objects to be seen—something he found odd in a house owned by a Catholic family.

Rey introduced him to the elderly uncle seated on a rocking chair. But the latter’s “thoughts seemed somewhere else,” the priest said.

Having arranged the holy water and the prayer cards brought by Rey, Tangi put on his stole and opened his book of prayers at the appropriate page.

Moaning

“I started the prayer and I could hear moaning, a male voice, as though in pain. It wouldn’t stop,” Tangi said.

He and the women exchanged glances anxiously.

Praying aloud, they walked around the house, with the moaning growing louder each time they entered a room.

Recalled Tangi: “It was loudest when we reached the kitchen. I realized it was coming from the refrigerator.

“I didn’t know whether to open the ref door or not. What if whatever was moaning leapt out? What if it were a spirit and entered me or one of my companions?”

Eyes closed but still praying, Tangi grasped the vial of holy water, swung the refrigerator door open, and wildly squirted the vial’s contents inside.

He opened his eyes and saw only food and bottles of drinking water.

“I could still hear moaning inside the ref but it was getting faint. When I posted a card bearing a prayer to the Holy Name of Jesus on the door, it stopped,” the priest said.

Rey then asked Tangi to pray over his uncle, who appeared indifferent to what had just transpired.

“I stood behind him and put my hands on his head. I blessed him but I felt that something was very wrong,” Tangi said.

No one spoke as he and the others left the house.

Click here for more chills!

Saint Francis Borgia performing the Holy Rite of Exorcism (in this painting by legendary Spanish painter Francisco Goya).

DISCLAIMER: Guys, don’t expect me to follow Vice President Noli’s footsteps, i.e., featuring scary stuff in FILIPINO eSCRIBBLES (or ALAS FILIPINAS) during the Halloween season, LOL!!! I don’t consider it as a Filipino celebration (that is why today’s blogpost is related to the true Filipino faith: Christianity/Catholicism). And even if I do, it is simply not a Filipino event. Well, I have to admit that I did dress up a couple of times in the past during Halloween festivities. But that doesn’t mean I endorse the yearly event. Celebrate it just for fun? I really don’t care. Nor am I excited about it. The final (and windy) days of October, however, always excite me because it means — Christmas is near!!!

I say, this Halloween cr@p is one way of allowing Yankee trade into our market. Filipinos are systematically brainwashed to embrace everything Yankee. We ape the way they speak, the way they dress, the way they act. Simply put, WE APE THEIR WAYS.

Let’s put it in simpler words. In Halloween’s case, for instance, Halloween products and other related commodities are imported into our country for local consumption. In the end, it makes Harpy Yankee’s bank accounts happy. In the end, it leaves our economy bloodied, like a scene from a visceral horror flick. In the end, that leaves me miffed.

Happy Halloween? My bony @$$.

Jack-o'-lantern, the famous symbol of Halloween.

déjà-vu questa è la sensazione che ho avuto (parzialmente) a madrid. la fille de poche credeva di aver già vissuto a tutto ciò che ha visto a madrid. bene, sebbene la sua permanenza in terre catalane per 6 mesi le abbia fatto nascere uno strano odio-amore per tutto ciò che è catalano…a madrid, la fille de poche è stata bene. partiamo dall’inizio, oltre che le storie a lieto fine nelle hall degli aereoporti dovrebbero far vivere le meglio storie d’amore. in attesa di partire per madrid, la fille de poche si è dimostrata come sempre una supposed infatuation junkie, visto uno splendido esempio di jamón ibérico se ne è innamorata. il giovine era bellissimo: moro, occhi verdi, un nasino splendido (strano che non avesse una naschia di adrianbrodyana memoria) e un neo/macchia di pelle splendido/a sulla sua guancia…che bel prosciuttino…la fille de poche è quasi impazzita, quando il salumino aveva capito ormai tutto e quando ha scoperto che l’Iberia aveva negato loro un futuro roseo di amore. sì il mio prosciuttino era seduto al sedile 11 io al 34, l’Iberia dovrà risarcirmi!!! al prossimo volo dovrò reincontrarlo, o dovrò reincontrare qualcun’altro di prosciuttiana memoria. bene, a madrid ho avuto la possibilità di vivere più volte varie sindromi di stendhal, sapete quel malessere-sensazione di vuoto immensa che prende alcune persone quando escono dalle mostre e/o dai musei, a me succede sempre di fronte a splendide opere d’arte: ho temuto di svenire di fronte all’immenso dolore oscuro dei quadri di francisco de goya, ho temuto di poter aver un infarto di fronte a guernika di pablo picasso, ho tentato di tendere la mano per salvare il perro semihundido di goya, ho quasi pianto di fronte al mio primo vero incontro con vincent van gogh, mi sono identificata nella infanta impertinente e anche un po’ viperetta del las meninas, ho avuto una crisi di pianto di fronte alla doppia visione di un’opera di bacon, e mi sono sentita triste e sola come la donna nella stanza di albergo rappresentata da hopper. a madrid, a parte quadri, mi sono dedicata a uno dei miei hobby preferiti: lo shopping, lo shopping frenetico senza sosta. degli splendidi stivali, 4 dvd, 1 cd, 4 libri, una borsa etc…ma soprattutto, in spagna sono stata in luogo, che porterò per luungo tempo dentro di me, una libreria specializzata in solo cinema, che splendore, quando sono entrata in punta di piedi temevo di rovinare quella splendida atmosfera che respiravo fatta di cinema, pellicole, emozioni. sulle pareti, poster di una ventina di film, autografati dai protagonisti, le firme e le attestazioni di stima erano presenti in tutte le pareti della libreria. mi sembrava di poter restare lì per il resto della mia vita, una sensazione che ho provato anche di fronte a guernika.

Hotel Room, Edward Hopper 1931

“If you could say it in words, there is no reason to paint”
Edward Hopper

Bisoux,

la fille de poche

(originally posted on: 08/01/06 – modified on: 14/10/09)

Luke Chueh 'Goya' Edition of 50 Size: 12 x 24 Inches $250 Each

Here is the latest drop from artist Luke Chueh, this print is called ‘Goya’. This is Luke Chueh’s remix of Francisco Goya’s ‘Saturn Devours His Son’ It is being released through Corey Helford Gallery and is now available for pre-order NOW. This 12 x 24 inch giclee has an edition size of 50 and comes either unframed for $250 each or framed for $375 each. Check it out HERE

Goya's Ghosts

A Scene From Goya's Ghosts

Milos Forman’s (Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) film about some of the fascinating events that occurred during the time of Francisco Goya was not widely seen and received for the most part mixed reviews. It was criticized primarily for being too slow and having a convoluted plot. I suppose I can see where those points might have merit but I found Goya’s Ghosts pros to far outweigh the cons. So much so I was very close to giving this a five star rating. My one true hang-up was that the film is a Spanish production shot in English. Odd, and the mix of accents can be slightly annoying in flashes.

The performances here from Stellan Skarsgård, Javier Bardem, and Natalie Portman are highlights in all of their careers. This is probably the only time besides No Country for Old Men that I really watched Bardem. In the first half of this film Bardem plays a character that is behaviorally not very different from his role in 2007’s best picture Oscar winner, but as Goya’s Ghosts moves forward his character changes and Bardem’s depth is on display. He really is a great actor. Portman on the other hand has always been touted as great for her potential but has never really had a showcase role. Here she does, and unfortunately no one saw it. Portman is a legitimate super-talent that only gets these tiny opportunities to show that off to the mainstream. Something tells me she doesn’t care about that but it would be nice to see her land a big budget Oscar bait role where she can really get the credit she deserves. Stellan Skarsgård is good in almost everything he has ever done. Moreover, the supporting cast is also strong. Especially the performance of unlikely cast member Randy Quaid. That’s right, I said Randy Quaid, who plays King Carlos IV.

Portman looking pretty beat up

Bardem as Brother Lorenzo

The film is set in late 18th century Spain during the time of the French Revolution. Goya (Skarsgård), a famous artist for Spanish royalty, seemingly becomes a target of the inquisition. Lorenzo, a monk who soon becomes in charge of the inquisition’s more intense initiatives, defends Goya. Lorenzo actually becomes a subject of one of Goya’s paintings. Inés (Portman), a Goya muse, is soon targeted by the inquisition. This brings microcosmic conflict between many of the film’s characters while the macrocosmic conflicts of the time period shift the characters even more profoundly. This makes for some very interesting and unpredictable circumstances. So much so, that it might be best to leave the rest unmentioned here. Suffice to say, I enjoyed this film far more than I thought I would.

Natalie Portman as a victim of the inquisition

Goya’s Ghosts references his paintings effectively and although the film may be guilty of unlikely coincidences, some melodrama, and some historical inaccuracy; it is certainly no more guilty of those things than other period pieces that are widely acclaimed by today’s critics. Goya is the straight man of Goya’s Ghosts, he is the observer and his work is used toward the narrative while the film is used as a tribute of sorts toward his work. I see Goya’s Ghosts as being on par with both One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus. Perhaps if Foreman were appreciated today like he was twenty or thirty years ago critics would’ve received this film with the same level of praise? Not sure, but I’m recommending this.

My Rating is 4 1/2 out of 5 stars.

New revised list of favorites here.

…

Diego Rivera. Zapata.

Edvard Munch. Madonne.

Edvard Munch. The Scream.

Francisco Goya. The Third of May.

Franz Marc. Das Aeffchenk.

Giorgio De Chirico. Hector et Andromache.

Giogio De Chirico. La Comedia e La Tragedia.

Giorgio De Chirico. The Disturbing Muses.

Henri Matisse. La Chute d'Icare.

Henri Matisse. The Dance.

Henri Matisse. The Dessert Harmony in Red.

Hieronymous Bosch. Garden of Earthly Delights (Hell).

Hieronymous Bosch. The Bus Ride.

Hieronymous Bosch. The Last Judgment.

Hieronymous Bosch. The Temptation of St. Anthony.

Joan Miro. Daybreak Tagesanbruch.

Joan Miro. L'oiseau au Regard Calme.

Joan Miro. La Masia.

Joan Miro. The Chanteur.

Joan Miro. The Garden.

Juan Gris. Still Life with Flowers.

Wassily Kandinsky.

Wassily Kandinsky. On White.

Wassily Kandinsky. Transverse Line.

Wassily Kandinsky.

Wassily Kandinsky.

Paul Klee.

Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2

Marcel Duchamp. The King and The Queen Surrounded by Swifts Nudes

Pablo Picasso. Guernica.

Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Pablo Picasso. Muchacha ante el Espejo.

Pablo Picasso. Mujer Sentada en un Sillon Rojo.

Pablo Picasso. The Lesson.

Pablo Picasso. Three Musicians.

Pablo Picasso. Women of Algiers.

Paul Klee. Death and Fire.

Paul Klee. Park Near Lucerne.

Paul Klee. Red Waistcoat.

Paul Klee. Siblings.

Paul Klee. 1914.

Paul Klee. Carnival in the Mountains.

Paul Klee. Comedians' Handbill.

Rene Magritte. Les Fils de L'homme.

Rene Magritte. Ceci N'est Pas Une Pipe.

Rene Magritte. Golconde.

Rene Magritte. The False Mirror.

Rene Magritte. The Lovers.

Rufino Tamayo. Hombre Contemplando

Rufino Tamayo. Watermelon.

Salvador Dali.

Salvador Dali. Liquid Desire.

Salvador Dali. Persistence of Memory.

Salvador Dali. Swans Reflecting Elephants.

Salvador Dali. Tristan et Isolde.

I found a used copy of Francisco Goya’s Los Caprichos at the Smathers Library bookstore. This Dover Fine Art Books edition reproduces all 80 aquatint prints in black and white, with 6 additional prints of preliminary studies and unique proofs. Goya produced Los Caprichos after coming out of a mysterious and debilitating illness in his fifites that left him “a changed man: bitter at times, secretive, far less exuberant” (p. 2). It proved to be a turning point in his artistic development.

To be sure he was one of the court painters of King Carlos IV, but had he died before the drawings and prints for Los Caprichos were made, he would today be rated as an attractive painter of the pre-Revolutionary era and, in graphics, as mainly a reproductive etcher–not the major artist and the father of modern art which he had started to become. (p. 1)

Caprichos literally means ‘fancy’ or ‘whimsy’, but there is certainly nothing fanciful or whimsical (in the ordinary sense of lightness or playfulness) in Goya’s Los Caprichos. It is also not properly horror, despite the attendance of witches, devils, and hobgoblins. It is rather said to be a satirical attack on 18th century Spanish society, specifically “the Spanish Inquisition, the corruption of the church and the nobility, witchcraft, child rearing, avarice, and the frivolity of young women” (Indepth Arts News, Portland Museum of Art). I do not know anything about 18th century Spanish society, but I can still catch echoes of Goya’s contemptuous laughter through his unsettling images. The dead-pan commentary of the Prado manuscript certainly helps. That these graphic prints still manage to convey the artist’s dour humours two-hundred ten years later attests to both his gothic and comic genius.

		4. Nanny’s boy. Negligence, tolerance and spoiling make children capricious, naughty, vain, greedy, lazy, insufferable. They grow up and yet remain childish. Thus is nanny’s little boy. What’s monstrous about this picture is ostensibly the tacking of a grown man’s head onto a little girl’s body. To me, even more repugnant than his thick eyebrows or mustachioed lips, are his stubby hands, fingers stuck in the mouth, and those heavy boots beneath the daintily embroidered skirt.
		12. Out hunting for teeth. The teeth of a hanged man are very efficatious for sorceries; without this ingredient there is not much you can do. What a pity the common people should believe such nonsense. The hanged man is obviously bound and dead. So why does the woman (or witch?) make the affected gesture of covering her face? She pulls at his teeth in the same delicate manner she would perhaps sew a dress. She tiptoes to reach for it, teetering it seems on a high wall, lunging forward, while at the same time, pulling back.
		19. All will fall. And those who are about to fall will not take warning from the example of those who have fallen! But nothing can be done about it: all will fall. This could have been a charming rustic scene of scullery maids preparing a chicken–the women’s faces certainly convey this–except that they are casually violating the poor thing. (Why?!) It’s Willem Joseph Laquy meets Hiernonymus Bosch. The commentary reminds us, with a keen tragic sense, of the certainty of ruin.
		40. Of what ill will he die? The doctor is excellent, pensive, considerate, calm, serious. What more can one ask for? Having suffered from protracted illness doctors could not diagnose, Goya must have detested the lot, portraying them as phony experts who professed false authority over diseases, while man’s true reality is sickness unto death.
		43. The sleep of reason produces monsters. Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of her wonders. The most well known print from Los Caprichos. Rousseau and the Enlightenment informed its condemnation of stupidity and superstition. The cat, though, looks like a knowing sphinx.
		45. There is plenty to suck. Those who reach eighty suck little children; those under eighteen suck grown-ups. It seems that man is born and lives to have the substance sucked out of him. Again, that capitulation to fate. Even children are not exempt; here, they are bought and sold like common victuals. Goya uses the desecration of innocents–a staple in witchcraft (see for example Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan, 1922)–to convey our tragic condition.
		49. Hobgoblins. Now this is another kind of people. Happy, playful, obliging; a little greedy, fond of playing practical jokes; but they are very good-natured little men. Those over-sized hands with knobby joints make their feet look more grotesquely small. How can they be described as both “a little greedy” and “very good-natured little men”? I think the descriptive ‘little’ is the operative word.
		51. They spruce themselves up. This business of having long nails is so pernicious that it is forbidden even in Witchcraft. A demon enjoying his pedicure. The clumsy shears on the hooked nail counterpoints with the pedicurist’s meticulous attention.
		55. Until death. She is quite right to make herself look pretty. It is her seventy-fifth birthday, and her little girl friends are coming to see her. This reminds me of some of Manila’s aging, pasty-faced socialites, who still insist on dressing up like debutantes.
		61. They have flown. The group of witches which serves as pedestal for this fashionable lady is put there for ornament rather than for use. There are heads so full of inflammable gas that they need neither baloons nor witches to make them fly. For some ‘fashionable’ ladies who appear in Manila’s society pages, it is not enough to have a mammoth butterfly pinned on their heads.
		66. There it goes. There goes a witch, riding on the little crippled devil. This poor devil, of whom everyone makes fun, is not without its uses sometimes. Except for the commentary, there is really no indication that the figure in the foreground is a devil–no horns, serpent’s tongue, cloven feet. The bat’s wings seem more of a cloak or a shadow. The occult figures are composed like a Tarot card. Is it a coincidence that this is the 66th print?
		69. Blow. No doubt there was a great catch of children the previous night. The banquet which they are preparing will be a rich one: “Bon appetit”. What is wicked here is not that children are about to be served in a witches’ banquet, but that their flatulence is used like gas from bellows to fan the flames.
		79. No one has seen us. And what does it matter if the goblins go down to the cellar and have four swigs, if they have been working all night and have left the scullery like gleaming gold. The glare of light make their faces look like macabre masks. These goblins look garbed like monks, drunk on altar wine.

Related Links:

• Dover edition at Google Books
• Exhibition at the Knoxville Museum of Art
• Digital collection at the Davidson Art Center, Wesleyan University
• PDF download at the Arno-Schmidt-Referenzbibliothek

Francisco de Goya

The Nude Maja 1797 

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828) was a Spanish painter and printmaker. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown and a chronicler of history. He has been regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and as the first of the moderns. The subversive and subjective element in his art, as well as his bold handling of paint, provided a model for the work of later generations of artists, notably Manet and Picasso.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Goya

Mikhael Subotzky is an infrequent contributor for the Magnum blog. In fact, it happened only once; in response to the Magnum blog competition, for which, members of the public drew visual similarities between the works of Magnum photographers and the works of art historical cannon.

If a convergence is presented by the artist himself does it make it indisputable? Or at least 50% indisputable?

"May 3, 1808: Shooting at Montana del Principe Pio", 1814. Francisco Jose de Goya (1745-1828) Collection of the Prado, Museum, Mardid.

Beaufort West Police Station, South Africa, 2006. © Michael Subotzky

Subotzky warns against referencing for referencing’s sake. (I’ll be vigilant). And, I’ll leave you with the most succinct of Subotzky’s comments:

I don’t think anybody [in photography] has more intelligently related to philosophy or the history of painting then Jeff Wall.

The Subotzky Trajectory has been steep. His photographic conscience and works warrant the worldwide attention they have. He is with Magnum. See his website. And read this and this. Book here. There is an interview over at Conscientious.

Oh, and by the way, no wikipedia page on Mikhael Subotzky, which surprises me.