This famous painting by Goya, entitled Tres de Mayo 1808, documents the execution of a group of Spaniards resisting Napoleon’s imperial occupation of their land… This is one of a series of truly iconic paintings documenting the horrors of war, and its value has appreciated with time because the emotional impact it delivers has not diminished, and “the universality of its subject matter” places it squarely in countless syllabi documenting important art work that reflect Europe’s history of turbulent internecine warfare. The painting is fully 2 centuries old, and yet it’s part of a lineage of images that have refined our global understanding of what war does to people, and the mercilessness and savagery it engenders amongst human beings. Currently housed in el Museo del Prado, I had the pleasure of seeing this up close and personal yesterday… it brought to mind this iconic Pulitzer prize winning photograph I saw recently in Washington DC’s Newseum, that essentially captures the same moment, albeit thousands of miles away, in Vietnam, a good century and a half after the events of 3 de Mayo...
perhaps we haven’t come as far as we believe we have…
No comments:
Post a Comment