Dark Imagery and History in “Goya in Bordeaux”

I found Goya in Bordeaux (1999) to be very informative and interesting as someone who came into this class with fairly limited knowledge regarding Goya’s life and history. I learned, or was reminded of many important aspects of Goya’s artistic life, including his inspiration by Velazquez, his voluntary exile and political involvement during the rule of Ferdinand VII, his relationship with the Duchess of Alba, his deafness, and his incredible imagination, which was often infiltrated and inspired by nightmares. I really enjoyed the dramatized and abstract scenes, which represented Goya’s nightmarish visions, because they gave me a sense of his imagination, artistic genius and the ways he was haunted by war and political corruption. Many of these scenes reminded me of images from The Disasters of War; even the dark style and scenery of the cinematographic images resemble the heavy shading of Goya’s prints. Seeing what Goya may have imagined made me feel that I could better understand his creativity and inspiration. The film also reflected the multifaceted nature of Goya’s artistic career—from his work as a court painter to his later printmaking, and even his more intimate and private portraits of the Duchess of Alba. I got a sense of the depth of Goya’s career, the periods of his life, and the ways his work reflect what he was going through at different points in his life. The scenes in which the young Goya walked through a corridor bordered by quadrants of his own life help frame this journey for the viewer. The dramatized scenes—such as the scenes of Goya painting at night with a ring of candles balanced on his hat—also did seem to reflect the degree to which the Spanish tend to admire and take pride in Goya and his work.