DARK HARVEST
Francisco de Goya said: ‘I see only forms that are lit up and forms that are not. There is only light and shadow.’
In the context of his etchings, the Caprichos, and his ‘black paintings’, Goya’s shadows surely engulfed any available or remaining light in the human soul. These works spoke to the graphic reality of war in a way that our modern sprawling media eyes cannot. Yet like Goya we can look at the times we are enduring and declare ‘Estos es malo’: This is bad. And by God, it is so bad now. In this decade, nihilism in art feels like realism rather than exaggeration.
