Items related to Old Man Goya
In 1792, when he was forty-seven, the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya contracted an illness that left him stone deaf. Yet he continued to interact with the world and to create, spending the next thirty-five years in a world emptied of sound but bursting with images of pageantry, cruelty, and pathos. In this brilliant, idiosyncratic book - a kaleidoscope of biography, memoir, history, and meditation - Julia Blackburn vividly imagines the artist's world during this time. She recreates the artist's friendships and love affairs and breathes life into the subjects of his paintings: an ethereally lovely duchess; the spoiled grotesques of the Bourbon court; the atrocities of the Napoleonic wars. Old Man Goya is a rare work of empathy and imagination, a stunning portrait of the mind and life of a great artist.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
Julia Blackburn has already established herself as one of the finest writers of non-fiction, but with Old Man Goya she takes her ability to re-create the past to a new level in her haunting evocation of the final years of the great Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya. Partly inspired by the painful loss her own mother (who was also a painter), Blackburn's desire to write about Goya developed when she learnt that in 1792, at the age of 47, the painter went permanently deaf; "I wanted to know what sort of world this deaf man had inhabited and how he had managed to live with the isolation of deafness and how it had changed the way he used his remaining senses". The result is a remarkably perceptive voyage into Goya's mind, which hovers between history and fiction, as Blackburn moves between the death of her own mother, visits to Goya's old haunts in Spain and France, and the painter's own remarkable lust for life in the midst of domestic upheavals and the horrors of warfare in early 19th-century Spain.
Review:
Old Man Goya moves from Goya's early days as a rich court painter, creating "dozens of designs of light-hearted subjects", to the trauma of deafness, the devastation of the bloody Peninsula War that swept Iberia between 1807 and 1812, the death of his first wife and old age with a mistress half his age. Interspersed amongst the text are 23 beautiful Goya copperplates through which Blackburn "can see Goya, a silent witness who makes no comment, but gives a shape to everything he sees", whose relish for the absurd, the cruel and the carnivalesque remained with him throughout his long life. Blackburn's elegant prose and unerring eye for domestic and artistic detail creates a wonderfully compassionate portrait of Goya, and she happily concedes to being "caught up in the spinning energy of the man as he hurtled relentlessly through the years", a journey that her readers will find well worth pursuing. --Jerry Brotton
" Extraordinary . . . Throughout, the writer's evocations of Goya's work are not just intensely visual but virtually audible . . . Blackburn writes to startling effect." -- "The New York Times
" " [Blackburn' s] real talent is in conjuring up lives . . . You have the uncanny sensation that you have met Goya, felt his honest horny hands, watched him work." -- "The Economist
"" [Blackburn' s] rare imagination and profound intelligence . . . carry her into the mind and the work of Francisco de Goya . . . Each image, exquisite in its plainness, draws us first into the landscape, then into the past, a process Blackburn repeats until we are mesmerized." -- "The Boston Globe
"" [A] singular, empathetic homage... .Blackburn's attempt to see with Goya's eyes... is most successful and moving. . . .She writes like a painter of still lives." -- "The Observer" (London)
" Blackburn's prose is elegant and precise, illuminated by intelligence, curiosity, and a refined visual sense . . . [She] beautifully conveys the changed reality of the newly deaf painter." -- "Literary Review
"
Extraordinary . . . Throughout, the writer s evocations of Goya s work are not just intensely visual but virtually audible . . . Blackburn writes to startling effect. The New York Times
[Blackburn s] real talent is in conjuring up lives . . . You have the uncanny sensation that you have met Goya, felt his honest horny hands, watched him work. The Economist
[Blackburn s] rare imagination and profound intelligence . . . carry her into the mind and the work of Francisco de Goya . . . Each image, exquisite in its plainness, draws us first into the landscape, then into the past, a process Blackburn repeats until we are mesmerized. The Boston Globe
[A] singular, empathetic homage .Blackburn's attempt to see with Goya's eyes is most successful and moving. . . .She writes like a painter of still lives. The Observer (London)
Blackburn s prose is elegant and precise, illuminated by intelligence, curiosity, and a refined visual sense . . . [She] beautifully conveys the changed reality of the newly deaf painter. Literary Review
"
"Extraordinary . . . Throughout, the writer's evocations of Goya's work are not just intensely visual but virtually audible . . . Blackburn writes to startling effect." --The New York Times "[Blackburn's] real talent is in conjuring up lives . . . You have the uncanny sensation that you have met Goya, felt his honest horny hands, watched him work." --The Economist "[Blackburn's] rare imagination and profound intelligence . . . carry her into the mind and the work of Francisco de Goya . . . Each image, exquisite in its plainness, draws us first into the landscape, then into the past, a process Blackburn repeats until we are mesmerized." --The Boston Globe "[A] singular, empathetic homage....Blackburn's attempt to see with Goya's eyes...is most successful and moving. . . .She writes like a painter of still lives." --The Observer (London) "Blackburn's prose is elegant and precise, illuminated by intelligence, curiosity, and a refined visual sense . . . [She] beautifully conveys the changed reality of the newly deaf painter." --Literary Review
" " [Blackburn' s] real talent is in conjuring up lives . . . You have the uncanny sensation that you have met Goya, felt his honest horny hands, watched him work." -- "The Economist
"" [Blackburn' s] rare imagination and profound intelligence . . . carry her into the mind and the work of Francisco de Goya . . . Each image, exquisite in its plainness, draws us first into the landscape, then into the past, a process Blackburn repeats until we are mesmerized." -- "The Boston Globe
"" [A] singular, empathetic homage... .Blackburn's attempt to see with Goya's eyes... is most successful and moving. . . .She writes like a painter of still lives." -- "The Observer" (London)
" Blackburn's prose is elegant and precise, illuminated by intelligence, curiosity, and a refined visual sense . . . [She] beautifully conveys the changed reality of the newly deaf painter." -- "Literary Review
"
Extraordinary . . . Throughout, the writer s evocations of Goya s work are not just intensely visual but virtually audible . . . Blackburn writes to startling effect. The New York Times
[Blackburn s] real talent is in conjuring up lives . . . You have the uncanny sensation that you have met Goya, felt his honest horny hands, watched him work. The Economist
[Blackburn s] rare imagination and profound intelligence . . . carry her into the mind and the work of Francisco de Goya . . . Each image, exquisite in its plainness, draws us first into the landscape, then into the past, a process Blackburn repeats until we are mesmerized. The Boston Globe
[A] singular, empathetic homage .Blackburn's attempt to see with Goya's eyes is most successful and moving. . . .She writes like a painter of still lives. The Observer (London)
Blackburn s prose is elegant and precise, illuminated by intelligence, curiosity, and a refined visual sense . . . [She] beautifully conveys the changed reality of the newly deaf painter. Literary Review
"
"Extraordinary . . . Throughout, the writer's evocations of Goya's work are not just intensely visual but virtually audible . . . Blackburn writes to startling effect." --The New York Times "[Blackburn's] real talent is in conjuring up lives . . . You have the uncanny sensation that you have met Goya, felt his honest horny hands, watched him work." --The Economist "[Blackburn's] rare imagination and profound intelligence . . . carry her into the mind and the work of Francisco de Goya . . . Each image, exquisite in its plainness, draws us first into the landscape, then into the past, a process Blackburn repeats until we are mesmerized." --The Boston Globe "[A] singular, empathetic homage....Blackburn's attempt to see with Goya's eyes...is most successful and moving. . . .She writes like a painter of still lives." --The Observer (London) "Blackburn's prose is elegant and precise, illuminated by intelligence, curiosity, and a refined visual sense . . . [She] beautifully conveys the changed reality of the newly deaf painter." --Literary Review
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherDemco Media
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 0606310916
- ISBN 13 9780606310918
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages239
- Rating
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