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But this bookis a great addition to one's collection of Goya's art. This is a great over view of Goya's collection of war images. It may be too graphic for some people.
I was fortunate to see the complete series of these etchings last summer at Syracuse University.I'm sure Goya would see the brutality of war that America is currently engaged in. As an artist and print maker I can admire Goya's mastery of the media.This book allows people who may not be familiar with Goya's etchings a sense of how powerful and timely these prints are even after 200 years.
Good for the kids' room. There is some topical political comment here, but you're mostly looking at the human condition, and with a few changes of costume and props, these prints are applicable to almost any conflict, anywhere. When I look at these prints, I am reminded of: the "contractors" whose dismembered bodies were hung from the bridge in Fallujah; the lynching postcards that were commonly mailed around the USA only a few generations ago to celebrate the murder of black men; Auschwitz; All Quiet on the Western Front; Sherman's March; the Trojan War; you get the idea. Unfortunately these powerful images are and shall remain contemporary.
Here must we see that the victims of our violence are human beings, our brothers and sisters, children and elders, and not some dehumanized uncounted collateral statistic alienated into separate labels of faith or of nation. When allowed by our media we may now see the same or similar images to these which Goya so accurately depicts, both realistically and fantastically. Read this book with Mark Twain's War Prayer, and turn aside from the ever more rugged war path surging with the blood of innocents.Even more than Barefoot Gen, more than the immortal Guernica, more even than Speigelman's Maus series, this realistic, classical and careful draftsmanship of the great Goya brings home to us across the centuries the true horrors and disasters of war, with poignant captions. Read this book and pray for peace.
Consistently all things published by Dover are of the highest and most comprehensive quality technically and academically, and yet at a very low and democratic price, as if they actually wish to place high culture into the hands of the common man and the poorest person, rather than charging top dollar for instantly disposable art and airport lounge short-lived literature. We strike our own family in these disasters of war. Please read this book in this excellent, scholarly and complete presentation by Dover Editions, now at an even lower price here upon the amazon. Dover rather presents for our constant use high quality and durable books: Our Daily Book.And thus this book which we need to see and weep every night as we grow dull with constant war and violence.
Read this book and study war no more. This is a powerful book which must be seen today, and most gratefully Dover offers it still upon this amazon. We see here why war must wage nevermore, in this brave new era of total and indiscriminate and disproportionate yet profitable colonialist warfare. Goya, so well known as a painter of the Spanish courts, but also of Saturn consuming his children, here shows us grotesquely and coldly the true meaning of war, the true fruits of warfare, the moral and the spiritual causes and effects of war: the disasters of war.As I pride myself as bilingual and am certified superlatively fluent in Spanish with some English besides, as well as a few other tongues, I found occasion here to wince at Dover's translations of Goya's carefully scripted captions, or to shout aloud more probable interpretations, yet I find this the only possible objection to this excellent and gratefully received volume, which must be on the table of every American home, lacking as we are the graphics from Fallujah or Gaza.
This book shows the What perfectly. War leads on to war, art leads on to art. Understanding what and how war happens is essential in order to fight it (I excluded Why since I believe there is no explanation for it). The Disasters of war is a difficult book to read, containing the most impressing pictures of war and its consequences. I have written a review of the book 'Why.' by Nikolai Popov which is about the How. But the most amazing is the vividness and actuality of the pictures. The black/white drawings are as real as life itself, and sometimes even more.Goya depicts tortures made on public squares, people starving to death, and warriors fighting. The Disasters of war is like a poetry book, it has no time, and no defined significance; it can be interpreted in infinite different ways and it is always an up-to-date work.In my view, one of the best ways to fight war is using art.
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