Reglas Del Poker

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Admin
Reglas Del Poker

Reglas Del Poker

Much of Spanish art is the stuff of horror. As inhabitants of the land of the Reconquista, Inquisition, Invasion and Civil War, the Spanish have had a lot to paint about. Just a glance at Spanish Still Life, (not the jolliest of genres to begin with) proves this. Zurbarán paints empty vessels, Still Life with Pottery Jars, symbols of transient earthly pleasures that are so transient they have already disappeared. Nearby is his painting Agnus Dei (The Lamb of God), an image no one wants to contemplate for too long, of a lamb, tied, in endless blackness. On a less violent, but no less weird and depressing note, are Cotan’s mouldy carrots (Still Life with Game, Vegetables and Fruit). This art is not a sight for sore eyes, although you might get sore eyes looking at it.

It’s not just the Prado’s symbolic art that stinks of depression and death. Nineteenth century historical paintings, not unlike Pre-Raphaelite renderings of Shakespeare or Tennyson, get in on the gruesome action too. Antonio Gisbert Pérez paints The Execution by Firing Squad of Torrijos and his Colleages on the beach at Málaga – a horrifically depressing scene of the liberal, José María Torrijos, holding the hands of his companions, staring steely ahead and awaiting death at the hands of the absolutist troops of Fernando VII. Torrijos, whose eyes speak defiance, was the victim of an ambush on the beaches of Malaga, betrayed by prepared by Governor Vicente González Moreno. Nearby, Carboneropaints a different kind of horror: the bitter loneliness of the future king Ferdinand’s brother, disowned by his father and condemned to loneliness, with a sleepy dog and reams of musty books as his only friends.

Exhibit of Goya's Painting

Yet nothing is more horrific than the sadistic imaginings of Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828). Goya’s work is real art; it doesn’t sink into the background, but hits you straight in the eye with red hot pokers. His work is hard to look at. He’s like an eighteenth century del Toro, creator of Pan’s Labyrinth, whose visceral scenes of unimaginable horror and sadism capture the possibility for power to become dismissive of humanity.