Francisco Goya’s Los Caprichos, in their original form, were comprised of simply the plate and a cursive caption underneath each illustration, such as “How they pluck her!” or “Out hunting for teeth”. The audience was left with no other means by which to extract meaning from the grotesque caricatures. In my own perception of the pictures, despite the knowledge that each scene was in some way a cynical social commentary, I would have found it extraordinarily difficult to make sense of what I was seeing without the aid of the descriptions beside each picture. I am unsure as to whether the public at the time would have been privy to Goya’s meaning based on simply intuition and critical thinking skills.
The aforementioned descriptions are characteristic of more modern editions of Los Caprichos and explain Goya’s intended criticism. However, once I considered the plates in the context of their artist’s intention, they became more than amusing grotesqueries – they were disturbingly accurate accounts of social trends or cultural tendencies. The true power of his work lies within these meanings which were not accessible to me without pretext.
