On horror in Goya:

Caprices and Disasters of war

Abstract

Francisco de Goya is an artist whose work has unsettled a generation of poets and thinkers. The engraving series, however, inaugurated by Caprichos (Los Caprichos) in 1799, represent a turning point in Goya’s aesthetics. Based on the concept of horror, which is constrained by the notions of fantastic and grotesque according to the figure of the monster, I consider it possible not only to understand one decisive part of his work, but also to raise some questions: would not the judgment of taste be, in the art of this Aragonese, closer to an interested displeasure than to an uninterested pleasure? Or, in that case, what would be left if not the comic laughter and the delight in the abject? And if the aesthetic pleasure finds itself banned from the representation by the shocking experience of horror, would there still be a work of art? Lastly, how and why many of these displeasing images of Goya create an effect that implicates his spectators? These are some questions which I intend to debate in this article.