Goya 英文原版

Robert Hughes, who has stunned us with comprehensive works onsubjects as sweeping and complex as the history of Australia (TheFatal Shore), the modern art movement (The Shock of the New), thenature of American art (American Visions), and the nature ofAmerica itself as seen through its art (The Culture of Complaint),now turns his renowned critical eye to one of art history’s mostcompelling, enigmatic, and important figures, Francisco José deGoya y Lucientes. With characteristic critical fervor and sure-eyedinsight, Hughes brings us the story of an artist whose life andwork bridged the transition from the eighteenth-century reign ofthe old masters to the early days of the nineteenth-centurymoderns.
With his salient passion for the artist and theart, Hughes brings Goya vividly to life through dazzling analysisof a vast breadth of his work. Building upon the historicalevidence that exists, Hughes tracks Goya’s development, as man andartist, without missing a beat, from the early works commissionedby the Church, through his long, productive, and tempestuous careerat court, to the darkly sinister and cryptic work he did at the endof his life.
In a work that is at once interpretivebiography and cultural epic, Hughes grounds Goya firmly in thecontext of his time, taking us on a wild romp through Spanishhistory; from the brutality and easy violence of street life to thefiery terrors of the Holy Inquisition to the grave realities ofwar, Hughes shows us in vibrant detail the cultural forces thatshaped Goya’s work.
Underlying the exhaustive, criticalanalysis and the rich historical background is Hughes’s ownintimately personal relationship to his subject. This is a bookinformed not only by lifelong love and study, but by his own recentexperiences of mortality and death. As such this is a uniquelymoving and human book; with the same relentless and fearlessintelligence he has brought to every subject he has ever tackled,Hughes here transcends biography to bring us a rich and fiercelybrave book about art and life, love and rage, impotence and death.This is one genius writing at full capacity about another—and theresult is truly spectacular.