Goya Exposed with Jake Chapman

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

My name is Jake Chapman.

For more than 20 years, me and my brother Dinos have been making art

related to the work of an artist that died nearly two centuries ago.

That artist is the Spaniard, Francisco Goya, and he produced

some of the most powerful and disturbing images of his time.

But we haven't been conventionally inspired by Goya's work.

Instead, we've drawn on, rectified and remade it.

We've inhabited and invaded it.

And if you count up all the works we've produced,

including individual etchings, editions, sculptures and models,

we've amassed over 1,000 artworks related to Goya,

almost all of them based upon his set of etchings, The Disasters Of War.

And we're not done with him yet.

Which of you hasn't been painted?

Because we're close to finishing another Goya-related artwork.

We've picked on Goya for a reason.

He is regarded as the first major artist of the modern era

and his depictions of man's inhumanity to man

are seen as an explicit protest against violence.

But in this film, I'm going to explain why I think

such an orderly interpretation of Goya's work is a mistake.

I'm going to travel to Spain

to see Goya's masterpieces in the Prado for the very first time

and visit his hometown, Zaragoza,

and the places that may have prompted The Disasters Of War.

Let's see if we can cross without getting killed.

But I'm not interested in Goya's personality,

nor unpicking his idiosyncratic motives.

What I want to do is explore the work's actual effect,

to examine its sinister underbelly,

to show that it is far more radical than conventional history allows

and that rather than illuminating the recesses of the human soul,

Goya propels us into an irredeemable gloom.

200 years ago, over a period of six years,

Francisco Goya etched 83 images onto copper plates.

Each shows a scene from the brutal war waged against the French forces

that had occupied Spain since 1807.

Nothing quite like it had appeared before.

Goya would never see his engravings committed to paper,

due to the politically sensitive content.

It was only 35 years after his death that the first sets were printed.

Goya gave them the title

Fatal Consequences Of Spain's Bloody War With Bonaparte And Other Emphatic Caprices.

But we know them as The Disasters Of War.

A dominant or conventional reading of the work would say that

the work is the trace element of Goya's experience of seeing violence

and that what the viewer does is

they recognise the truth of that in the work and they respond to it.

The Disasters Of War are often regarded as a warning against

violence, as documentary evidence of mankind's capacity for inhumanity.

But I've always found this explanation misleading.

I'm more interested in what is excluded

by this positive interpretation, which is why Goya's work

has been a starting point for so much of our art.

This is our working copy of The Disasters Of War.

It's just a very kind of cheap, off-the-shelf, cheap print.

What's interesting is, the drawings are underscored by things

which describe, give them a moral elevation.

This is probably the most iconic,

which is Great Deeds Against The Dead.

In terms of how you read the drawing,

as an index of an objection to violence on the part of the artist,

the degree to which the artist is obliged to draw something

which allows us to have a kind of model reaction

is in itself in excess of the message which it is supposed to deliver.

That there is something inherently paradoxical about making

a work of art which tells us that violence is bad

and simultaneously shows us that violence drawn like this

is attractive, has some intensive meaning for us,

and that intensive meaning,

I guess I'm interested in where that intensive meaning exists.

We are at the Tate Gallery storage

and we are going to look at Disasters Of War

which is our first rendition of small-scale toy sculptures

which was produced, I think...

I haven't seen it for ten years, I can't remember when we made it,

but I know I haven't seen it for ten years, so we'll go from there.

I'm really excited to see it.

Hi.

Oh, wow.

God.

It's like, um, Goya crazy golf.

It's so weird. It's really strange seeing this.

This was made in my flat in Pepys Road, New Cross,

before we even had a studio.

It's amazing.

It's simultaneously alien but painfully familiar.

I can really remember making it.

But...just the overall aesthetic is very crude.

This was our first artwork based on Goya.

We painstakingly copied each scene from The Disasters Of War.

By reducing their scale to the domain of toys,

we wanted to deny death its true magnitude,

to call into question the obvious moral certainty of these images.

In the years after we made this work,

we returned again and again to Goya's images.

But now I've decided to come to Spain to see Goya's work in person.

We are at the Prado, in Madrid.

This is the first time I've ever been here,

so to see Goya's paintings, it's very exciting for me,

to see them for the first time.

Face to face.

You know, it's pretty glib, but the person in profile looks like

the kind of person who would blink in a family photographic portrait.

It's quite strange. Why would you paint someone like that? Quite odd.

The idea of two paintings with the same subject,

one dressed and one nude, is already...

seems to me significantly an audacious act,

and one which begs questions of the idea of repetition

and the idea of modernity.

Also, given the fact that actually the power of these paintings

is also something to do with the fact that

the privileged gaze of the male spectator

is somehow being reciprocated by the subject

and, therefore, in some senses,

the relations of power are being upended.

The idea that Goya can be regarded as a modern artist is

because the idea of the invention of an internal landscape,

the idea of an investigation or examination of the psyche.

And also, that in some ways, his investigation of this kind of content

has an effect over the kind of tools or mechanisms for representation.

The representational means themselves become simultaneous with the content.

That is to say that they become psychologically active.

Not only for the artist but for the viewer.

We are going to enter the room, Black Paintings,

The Second and Third of May,

paintings which I've never seen before in the flesh.

God.

Jesus.

What's interesting about seeing a painting in the flesh,

after you're familiar with it in reproduction,

is that it kind of decompresses from the flatness of the image.

Goya's great masterpiece, The Third of May,

shows the execution of Spanish partisans by French soldiers in 1808.

These were the first days of a war that would leave Spain in ruins.

This work is very particular

in the manner in which it captures its political subject.

It is considered one of the first great paintings of the modern era.

You notice this kind of strange lamp in the middle,

which is obviously the light source for the luminosity of these figures,

but it's quite an interesting object to have in a painting.

And also, you know, just the way in which some of these,

obviously, the figures are anonymised by being painted from reverse.

You know, again, you're getting these bits

where the paint is almost thinning out to nothing.

The blood...is almost reduced to simple strokes of the brush.

Again, somehow it still maintains its ability to be blood-like,

and yet at the same time, paint-like.

Maybe what's happening here is this kind of precarious balance

against which the content of the painting

is beginning to emerge from the paint,

almost by the willpower of the viewer,

rather than just the viewer identifying its pictorial depth.

But rather than it necessarily being the content of the work,

it's also to do with how the viewer has to struggle

in order to make these things conform to an image.

If you look at the violence in the formal terms of the painting -

the way in which the structure is falling apart,

the way in which there are flat parts -

there are ways in which the illusion is being kind of degraded

or being destroyed or being completely disregarded,

and that the formal and conventional ways in which we look at

a painting is being completely broken up -

that is an extremely violent act.

They are more violent than just the simple sort of representational,

pictorial offering of someone being shot or stabbed.

These are Goya's Black Paintings. Notorious Black Paintings.

These images were made by Goya in the last years of his life.

It is widely assumed that through this period,

Goya suffered from some form of mental illness.

Art historians have speculated on the causes -

his political and social alienation,

the illness that rendered him deaf

or the horrors that he witnessed during the war.

But whatever the causes,

it is these images that are used as evidence of his mental state.

When you look at this painting,

I think you could be forgiven for assuming

that if these likenesses are anything realistic,

then the subjects of these paintings look like mad people.

They look like images of people who exist in asylums.

If they are of mad people, you might make the mistake of thinking

they've been painted by a mad person.

I'm suggesting that it does not necessarily follow that the artist...

that these things are mirrors of the psychological state of the artist.

The problem, I suppose, that I'm having

with assuming the confessional state of these works

representing something pathological on the part of the artist,

will somehow obscure the specificity of the paintings.

But the paintings are good despite the artist.

I'm suggesting that my interest in Goya

is Goya the works of art and not Goya the person.

For fear of making that mistake.

This blurred line between art and biography is a potent presence

in the way Goya's later work is understood,

and it's true of The Disasters Of War as much as anything else.

I've arrived in Zaragoza, which is Goya's home town, but I'm also here

to visit some of the places depicted in The Disasters Of War.

In the main cathedral square...

I've spotted a sculpture of Goya,

a statue of Goya, I should say.

I wonder if that is supposed to be a suite of Disasters Of War.

He's clutching his etchings.

He's got a hard point scribe in his right hand,

Disasters of War in his left hand.

Zaragoza was the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting

during the Napoleonic occupation of Spain.

The city was completely destroyed and the population decimated.

All that remains today of that conflict

is a bullet-ridden city gate.

But one of the popular heroes of the siege

was a woman who came to be known as Agustina of Aragon

and she is depicted by Goya in The Disasters Of War.

'I'm meeting a local guide who is going to tell me more.'

The monument is called

the monument to the heroines of what we call the Independence War.

-You call it the Peninsular War.

-Right.

-Heroines, the female form - very important.

-Right, OK.

Can you explain the symbolism of the monument?

Right on top we've got Agustina de Aragon

who is the heroine of the war.

But she was only one amongst many.

But maybe the episode which is represented here

is the most famous one.

One morning, the French had been bombing the city gates.

All the men who were defending it

were dying or dead, lying on the floor.

The cannon was loaded, but there was nobody there to fire it.

She saw the whole situation, so she herself took the burning light

from the hands of the fallen soldier, lit the cannon, fired it.

The French were frightened so they did not dare to attack

and the defenders could assemble again.

-How ferocious was the fighting?

-It was terrible.

Everywhere, the whole city.

Because it was the civil population who were in front of the soldiers.

You must imagine, this was a very, very strange thing.

Actually, the French marshal, Lannes, wrote letters home saying

he had been taught to fight against soldiers, but not against madmen.

In this case, he was fighting madmen.

-He was not used to this kind of war.

-And women and children.

Madmen, madwoman, mad children.

Clearly, this frieze has been made

with some knowledge of Goya's image.

This image is iconic.

But in some ways, what the artist has chosen to do

is to effectively add some naturalism to it,

to depict the event with an effective realism,

which clearly highlights the fact that Goya was not concerned

with a naturalistic representation of the event.

So what is Goya doing?

It's clear from this that Goya's Disasters Of War is far more

than a simple pictorial document of the Napoleonic War in Spain.

One of the reasons Goya is so compelling

is that there is a strict continuity between the violence of the images

and the compositional approach he used to make the etchings.

In order for us to have to in some ways

congeal or crystallise the atrocity of this event,

we would have to be very generous

in our reading of this is an actual thing.

The symbolic importance of these things

is less to do with the sheer content

than it is to do with the execution of the drawing.

And also, not just the execution of the drawing,

but the point at which the drawing begins to break up, shatter.

So you get these kind of things which don't pictorially congeal

into the overall balance of the image.

This fractured approach to the image

is the essential element in Goya's work

and it was there even at the very beginning.

Whilst in Zaragoza, I went to see two of his early commissions

on the ceiling of the city's cathedral.

You get a real sense

of the institutional magnitude of the Catholic Church,

an institution that Goya was fully immersed in.

Something which would later become paradoxical to him

in terms of his infatuation with the idea of enlightenment,

which in itself...

..poses religion as superstition.

The feet have been worn by people kissing them.

Amazing, there's a wig.

Goya's first commission for the Catholic Church,

which was painted in 1772.

And if you look to the right,

you can see some, ironically, bomb damage from the Spanish Civil War.

PRIEST AND CONGREGATION SINGING

These two paintings are made as sketches

in preparation for the main painting up here on the ceiling.

A really strange perspective.

But I think even with this,

you can see a strange looseness to the paintwork.

Things don't seem to congeal into solid shapes.

They always seem to have a certain transparency to them,

which I think is a hint of what's to come.

If you look at those early Goya pieces,

even literally on the ceiling of the Zaragoza Cathedral,

those things are... they have a sort of opacity to them -

they're ethereal, they kind of float.

They kind of allude to some idea

of some metaphysical sort of higher plane.

Whereas the images in Disasters Of War, they are very grounded.

But they're not grounded in certainty,

they're grounded in the kind of temporality of flesh

that is born and dies.

I'm back in Madrid and I'm visiting the Royal Academy of San Fernando

to see some early editions of The Disasters Of War.

But most of all,

I'm looking forward to seeing some of the original etch plates.

I'm looking at an original plate from The Disasters Of War.

It's quite an amazing thing to see the plate itself.

To see the actual drawing.

The origin of the print,

which is kind of a very strange object, actually.

The thing that's interesting about the plate is that

it's the original work of art

and yet it's only the mechanical process.

So it's not strictly a work of art, it's not strictly an image.

Even the problem of looking at it

is because the image is etched into copper

and I think these plates have been steel-faced

to protect the surface, because copper is obviously very soft.

So there's something quite interesting about the idea

that this thing is the origin of the work,

and at the same time it's not the work itself.

So these are first edition prints.

Goya would never have seen these.

I'm not sure if he ever saw proofs.

Even that is quite an interesting idea

that the prints were produced after he died.

I have had the pleasure of working through these images

in various different ways, copying them

in terms of producing little vignette sculptures from them directly.

Also, re-drawing them, re-etching them, drawing on them.

The idea of drawing on the work makes it more rare.

Not OUR work, but if you diminish the numbers of available Goyas,

it makes them less to do with being kind of mechanically reproduced

and more specific.

One of the things we are interested in is the proposition

that if we drew on them, could we raise their financial value

and use the money we could make from drawing on one set

to buy the next set

so that we would have an infinite series of...

a rollover slush fund, a Goya slush fund.

But as well as working on Goya's prints,

we've almost finished another new work based on The Disasters Of War.

But this time with some more familiar characters.

This is, I suppose,

a sort of updated version

of the first Disasters Of War we made

from the original etchings in toy soldier form.

These are almost like a kind of end point, where the representations

are much more kind of detailed and graphic.

It seemed quite a nice idea to complete the series

by returning to the original,

but using all of the characters and the little figures

that have perhaps invaded our work.

They range from Ronald McDonald, the evil clown,

or the clown who lost his humour,

to...even, um, figures that have figured...

as mannequin pieces which...

We made a show where we included our own audience made of mannequins

with KKK robes and Birkenstock shoes and rainbow socks.

So there's an idea of contraction and expansion always in the works.

So if you think about the...

This piece...

obviously, this is poor old Ronald who is getting his comeuppance.

Great Deeds Against The Dead, great deeds against the clown.

We've also expanded this work so that it is full-sized

in Great Deeds Against The Dead, with the full-sized mannequins.

We've also made this work on a full scale with parts from joke shops.

Trying to work out how far

we can actually extort meaning from this one picture.

I think Great Deeds Against The Dead is a particularly heretic image

because it just literally denies

the idea that this stuff, this flesh, can ever be redeemed.

The notion of gravity, the notion of entropy, the notion of decay,

comparing this to redemption,

the idea of some kind of ethereal escape,

is a huge shift, is a massive kind of violence upon the world.

And so it is the heresy of Goya's dead flesh that is truly radical.

But it's not only Christian redemption that is at stake here.

I believe this is an image

that cannot be co-opted by a secular humanism either.

For me, this isn't about redemption in any form.

To see it in that way is to presume that our empathy for the subject

can suppress its implicit horror.

Goya undoubtedly produced

some of the most powerful images in modern history,

but I think to limit the work by false idealism does violence

to the complexity of its meaning.

At the heart of these images is a paradox,

that the violence depicted

is in fact essential to the very morality that it transgresses.

In other words, in order to be good, you have to see some bad things.

The idea of us returning to The Disasters Of War,

remaking works associated with it

is one way of ensuring

a lack of progress in the work, you know.

If we are condemned to this kind of act of repetition,

there's no sense in which there is a forward momentum.

Will you keep making work based on The Disasters Of War?

We will... I promise we will.

I promise we won't.

LAUGHTER