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Goya's Black Paintings: ‘Some people can hardly even look at them’

Goya’s bleak visions were originally painted onto the walls of his house – and remain some of the most disturbing artworks ever made

A boggle-eyed pagan god feasts on the headless carcass of his own son. A humanoid billy goat in a monkish cassock bleats a satanic sermon to a gasping congregation of witches. A desperately expressive little dog appears to plead for rescue, submerged up to its neck in a mud-coloured mire beneath a gloomy, void-like firmament of negative space.

“Well, these are quite a pick-me-up,” remarks one visitor to Madrid’s Prado museum, as his group moves quickly past the Black Paintings of Francisco de Goya. I have overheard that kind of thing many times in this room: a jokey, defensive sort of irony in response to the spectacular weirdness and bleakness of these 14 images.

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from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2BbTCzb
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