FRANCISCO GOYA’S body
of work can be viewed as one man’s journey across the enlightenment, from its
dawn to its dusk, from the rise of its hopes to sinking into its darkness: the
painter began his long career as a believer of enlightenment, yearning that it would
bring a change to Spanish society (this can be observed in his early paintings which
depicted his society in bright colours and cheerful atmospheres) and ended up
being disillusioned by it. This sentiment was not without reason, it was
gradually developed by continuously seeing the Spanish government—the
nobilities—going further and further away from the enlightenment promises that
he had once believed, coupled with the horror of the Napolenoic war which occurred
during his lifetime[1].
His final works, a dark and disturbing collection of paintings called Pinturas
negras, or Black Paintings, were the apotheosis of his
disappointment with enlightenment, and humanity in general. The fourteen paintings
were created between 1819 and 1823, after Goya had resigned from his duty as
a court painter and decided to reside in a house outside Madrid that was
called Quinta del Sordo (Deaf Man’s Villa); he made them on the walls of
this house[2]. The most famous work from these mural paintings is perhaps the terrifying Saturn Devouring His Son
(Saturno devorando a su hijo); another one that is, unfortunately, less
famous but no less interesting is the painting Fight with Cudgels (Duelo
a garrotazos).
Fight with Cudgels (Duelo a garrotazos),
Francisco Goya, 1820–1823
Fight with Cudgels is an oil mural—which later transferred
to canvas upon the death of the painter—depicting two men fighting one another
with cudgels; some scholars noted that this seems to be an allusion to Spanish
Civil War[3]. It’s a landscape painting
with two figures: the men are in the foreground, but positioned a bit on the
left side of the painting instead of the centre, allowing us to observe the nature
of the landscape in which the fight took place. Various shades of blue, brown,
and green dominate this painting, contributing to creating a depressive, desolate
atmosphere. Meanwhile, the two figures are predominantly black and white, and
on the face of one of them, there are small red patches that indicate drips
of blood: evidence that their fight is serious, a fight to the death. White
is also visible in one part of the sky, showing the source of light in the
painting, which we could assume is the sun setting on the horizon (at the
centre part of the painting, behind the figure on the right, or serving as the
backlight of the fight scene): this could also be read as a sign that the two
men have been fighting endlessly long and still not finished (or about to
finish) by the end of the day. One interesting aspect of this painting is that
the bottom to the knees of the two men are somehow missing: creates the impression
or illusion that the two of them are either fighting on their knees that are
sucked in some kind of mud (or quagmire). This mud interpretation has actually
been refuted by several scholars by examining the photo of the mural before
being transferred to the canvas (photographed by Jean Laurent, around 1874),
and it was seen that the legs of the two men were completely painted, and the landscape of the painting was a grass field and not mud; it’s believed that the
failure of the transfer that has caused the damage on large areas of the
painting, including the legs of the two men. However, one could argue that the
final detail emphasizes the interpretation of the never-ending fight to the death: that
the two men’s legs are buried in the ground, and they couldn’t move anywhere:
they have no other choice but to fight to the death, and whoever comes out as
the victor, he will still be trapped.
The first thing we can associate with the fight in this painting is war.
Through Goya’s previous works—for example, The Disasters of War (Los
desastres de la guerra), a series of 82 prints he created between 1810 and
1820, or the famous painting The Third of May 1808 (El tres de mayo
de 1808 en Madrid, 1814)—we know how he viewed war, we know he experienced
the horror of war in his country. In this painting, war, or human conflict in
general, appears symbolically, represented by the two men fighting. And from
the details and the atmosphere of the paintings, we can conclude that all those
conflicts carry out by humans will only end up damaging nature.
Jamón Jamón, Bigas Luna, 1992
About 160 years after the death of Goya, Bigas Luna, the famous Spanish
director, released a film called Jamón Jamón (or Ham Ham in
English). His films are known for their eroticism and its connection to food,
and this one is no different. The film tells a love triangle between Silvia (Penélope
Cruz), Raúl Gonzales (Javier Bardem), and José Luis (Jordi Mollà). Silvia works
sewing men’s underwear, José Luis is the son of the underwear factory owners,
and Raúl Gonzales is an aspiring bullfighter, a part-time underwear model, as
well as a part-time worker in a ham warehouse; hence the film’s title. Many
things happen throughout the duration of the film—Silvia is pregnant, José Luis
is committed to marrying Silvia, José Luis’s mother rejects her (because her
mother is a prostitute), Jose Luis’s mother hires Raúl Gonzales to seduce
Silvia, Raúl Gonzales is genuinely smitten by Silvia, Jose Luis’s mother is gradually
smitten by Raúl Gonzales—all this leads up to the final climax: the fight
between Raúl Gonzales and José Luis. José Luis, furious to find his mother
making love to Raúl Gonzales (who has also tried to seduce the woman he loves)
in the ham warehouse, immediately grabs a ham to attack. Provoked, Raúl
Gonzales also seized a club of ham as a weapon. The two men attacked each other
until they came out of the warehouse, and the fight continued in an arid desert
landscape. The composition of this scene will remind us of Goya’s painting that
we have talked about at length before: instead of cudgels, the two men fight
with hams, and although the clothes they wear are not exactly the same as the
two figures in the painting, their gestures and their position on the screen
are arguably similar. Raúl Gonzales, who is the more classically macho and whom
the audience would probably assume the more physically stronger between the
two, is placed on the right, and José Luis, whose nose is covered with blood,
is on the left, corresponding to the original composition of Fighting with
Cudgels. And regarding the positioning of the two men’s legs, the director
prefers to make them fight kneeling; this choice is logical and practical for
the film, rather than, for example, choosing to have both men’s legs buried in
the ground. This climax resulted in the death of José Luis and Raúl Gonzales being
badly wounded. All parties involved in this complicated melodrama weeps, drowning
in remorse, but all is too late.
We may argue that the use of Fight with Cudgel’s composition in Jamón
Jamón has reduced the painting’s interpretation to a soap opera-style
romance. But then we need to remember that history and literature have recorded
many conflicts, wars and massacres that occurred solely because of love and
jealousy: The Trojan War took place because the king of Sparta was furious for his
wife had run off with Paris, the war between Rama and Ravana in Ramayana
was fought over Sita, and one of the reasons, and perhaps the most crucial one,
for the battle of Mahabharata was the disrobing of Drupadi by Kaurava; in
short, we humans may have experienced enlightenment, but we’re still humans,
and just as humans can fight and kill each other out of glory and power, humans
can do so cruelly too out of love and jealousy.
[1] Voorhies, James.
“Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) and the Spanish Enlightenment,” The Met:
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, October 2003. Accessed December 18, 2020
from https://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/goya/hd_goya.htm#:~:text=Goya%20came%20to%20artistic%20maturity%20during%20this%20age,joined%20their%20studio%2C%20eventually%20marrying%20their%20sister%20Josefa.
[2] Phelan, Stephen. “Goya's
Black Paintings: ‘Some people can hardly even look at them’,” The Guardian, 30
January 2019. Accessed December 18, 2020 from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/jan/30/goya-black-paintings-prado-madrid-bicentennial-exhibition
[3] Anonym. “Fight with
Cudgels, 1820 by Francisco Goya,” franciscogoya.com, n.d. Accessed December 17,
2020 from https://www.franciscogoya.com/fight-with-cudgels.jsp
