Goya and Graffiti

It was scary, moving into this small apartment with no studio. It has taken a while, but I have finally managed to build a studio for myself, with a desk for the girls as well, at the end of the living room. 

Here I am contemplating the many too many studios that I have created over the years. Sometimes, I have ended up spending more time in the making than in the using of them! If only my art form was building studios, I would have a large body of work to display!

My side, with computer screen for Photoshop



Girl's side

   

 I was actually trying to ignore the canvases on the wall and the screen behind the couch as I felt that I was too busy with other things to get started. But the thought of PACKING to return to the States for the summer was the inspiration I needed to start several large paintings.

This painting is loosely based on a place I go by on one of my favorite walks from the apartment.

The Chapel of San Antonio, or what I think of as Goya's Chapel. It and its twin can be seen from our apartment, peaking out from the trees in front of those 4 tall apartment buildings.

The first chapel was built at the end of the 18th century by King Charles the IV who commissioned Goya to paint the interior to honor St. Anthony of Padua. Goya was also buried there. In 1928 its twin was built in order that the first could become a museum for Goya's frescoes, and the second could continue to serve as a chapel.

The chapels in the winter.

The frescoes depict the miracles of St. Anthony, but in the life contemporary with Goya.

It is a wonderful space, soothing and restoring. I wish I could show you more photos of the interior, but they don't allow cameras.

 However, overall, I prefer Goya's darker uncommisioned work that he made to please himself. Works that depict human suffering, longing, the pain of mental anguish.

The artifice and hypocrisy of society.

The horrors of war. Actually, this one was comissioned by Charles the IV to depict the Napoleon's invasion of Spain.

He also did some commissioned pieces that were slyly, and not so slyly satirical. This one of Charles the IV and family was famously described by the french poet, Theophile Gautier, as looking like "the corner baker and his wife after they won the lottery". Charles's wife, Louisa, who was considered the real power behind the throne is smack dab in the middle. 

But Goya really excelled in depicting mental anguish. His last works were very dark, and (especially relevant to this post on street art) most were painted on the walls of his house, with no plan even to show them to anyone else.

The most famous of this period is of Saturn eating his children.

Many of the paintings on the walls of his house have strange, indecipherable illusions to witchcraft.

Of course, these are not the ones you want to contemplate if you are looking to be soothed. Definitely go to the Chapel of San Antonio for that. Though for the past two weeks there has been a carnival set up next to chapels with lots of rides, bright lights and very bad, very loud music. According to the city, it is the Festival of St. Anthony. Poor guy; the saint and Goya would have both hated that.

I have often started out for the chapel, but I have only gotten there twice, as I always become distracted  by more contemporary "murals." After passing through Parque de Oeste you come to another park, which I call "Lonely Park". It stretches to either side of the Railroad tracks and gets few visitors.

At its entrance are these slabs of rock.

I had passed them a few times before one of the girls pointed out that the slabs spell GOYA.

Goya was contemptuous of  pretention and self importance. I don't think he would have cared for this monument.

Facing the slabs, on the back of the stairs to the bridge over the tracks is an equally monumental graffiti mural that went up just this past week. It is quite big, and very professionally executed.

 I like this spray can artist.

 The bridge is actually a bit of a grim, urban landscape. But I think Goya, particularly in his latter, darker, years would have apreciated its raw, unpretentious quality. And, leaving aside all the graffiti that is vain,

obnoxious and unredeamingly ugly, (quite a lot of it I admit) I think he would have appreciated the efforts of the many anonymous artists who make their visual statements without public applause.

These are a couple of my favorites from the bridge:

Sometimes even bad graffitti achieves an appealing effect when layered over and over each other. I found another new piece of art today that used this layered effect as a nice background:

Can you make out the pan-handler angel, in a sweatshirt? This is a different class of street art. It looks like a Banksy, a very well known street artist, and, like a lot of his work, is done on paper and pasted up. The hand and the wing were loose and flapping about. After I left, I kept thinking about it falling off and being trampled. I considered going back with a glue stick to attach it better to the wall, but thought I was less likely to get in trouble removing graffiti than putting it up, so  I went back and took it.

I felt like a criminal. I made sure no one was around and furtively rolled it up. Just then two policemen on motorcycles came speeding over the bridge! Just going somewhere fast, but my heart stopped for a second, thinking I was to be arrested - for stealing graffiti!

Here is my stolen graffiti, now on the wall outside the kitchen. but I am still feeling guilty about this. I may have to go back and put it up. When does this get done, in a city that never sleeps, except in broad daylight?

Back to the bridge.... When you get to the other side you can look back at an enormous mural. I guess it is at least 30 feet high.

To me there is something amusing and poignant about this enormous, well executed mural of a heavy weight champion performing for a crowd (suggested by the grey silhouette) under the lights,

 (and do you see the cameraman? He looks like one of those characters in Spy vs Spy).

Yet he is in an obscure, desolate spot under a railway bridge. Could it be, like many of Goya's works, an ironic piece,?

More likely the fighter is a metaphor for the artist who has blown his competitors, the other graffiti artists, out of the ring with the enormity of his mural.

Remember how there was a carnival in the guise of the Festival of St. Anthony set up by the chapels, and to the other side of the bridge? As I looked over to where it was being dissassembled, I saw that the walls they had surrounded it with had become canvases for the local graffiti artists.

So, over 200 years ago, Goya made murals for St. Anthony, and now the graffiti artists are. As a Fransican monk, St. Anthony was dedicated to a life of poverty, and to aiding the poor. So it seems fitting that the primary audience for these murals is the homeless who inhabit Lonely Park. 

The two guys on the bench up there are sharing a bottle, and seemed to belong to a contingent living under the stairs to the bridge.

Many bridges and stairs have people sleeping under them, but these in Lonely Park have fairly elaborate habitations protected by fabrics.

The wall that runs along the railroad on the park side is about 4 and a half feet high and goes for about a 1/3 of a mile. All painted. Following are some of mine, and Iris's, favorite images.

I am pretty sure this is Obama, who shifted the American presidency from Bush's interest in guns to an interest in family dogs (actually dog). The Spanish, in fact all Europeans, are intrigued by the prevalence of guns in the States.

Here you see the murals on the far wall by the railroad tracks behind the fence.

Ah ha! Must have been that boxing champ who bent the iron bars back so he could get in the ring. A convenience for someone wanting to take photos of the walls by the tracks.....

The lower paintings are mostly about 10 feet high. The amount of time and money in cans of paint, as well as the effort and risk of making these paintings is mind boggling. And I have yet to see anyone but me spending time looking at them.

 This is the longest and took 4 photos to capture. It must be about 90 feet long.

 Do you see in the one below that the profile of the city is captured in the letters?

 Well, I could have posted countless more images just from the two sides of the railway tracks. Counting up all the walls that are covered, there are many many miles of paintings.

One of the effects that I like is the reflection of the paintings in the windows of the trains.



And that is it for this post.

As always, feel free to leave a comment here, or to write to me at margotkimball@gmail.com