Tag Archives: music

December 6, 2012 · 10:06 am

A Cool Catholic Nerd: Goodbye, Dave Brubeck

One of the great regrets of my life to date – along with not learning to speak French, which I may still hope to do –  is that I never got the chance to see jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck, who died yesterday, perform live in concert.  I came close, once: a couple of years ago my good friend over at Ten Thousand Places alerted me that Mr. Brubeck would be performing at The Kennedy Center, and I learnt that nearly around the same time he would be performing at the Blues Alley jazz club here in Georgetown. We talked about possibly getting a small group of friends together to go see him, but were rather dismayed when all of the tickets sold out within minutes, and were then being scalped online for some astronomically high prices.  For a very old man whose heyday was many decades ago, this is quite a testament to the longevity of his career and his enduring popularity.

Dave Brubeck and his eponymous Quartet became a part of my life largely through the influence of my father.  Dad would tell me about listening to Brubeck, Desmond, et al in high school and college during the late 1950′s/early 1960′s, and how he connected with it and with that era.  I distinctly remember being a young boy and staring intently at the cover of his copy of “Red, Hot, and Cool” from 1955, which I believe my youngest brother has now expropriated for his own collection.

This particular record was released well before the now-legendary “Take Five”, “Blue Rondo a la Turk”, “Three To Get Ready”, and so on from their 1959 “Time Out” album, when Brubeck et al were still growing in popularity.  On the cover we see a group of well-dressed, but admittedly rather nerdy-looking guys, playing music in a smoky jazz club somewhere in New York, laughing it up with a beautiful model in a red dress.  ”That’s what I want,” I would think to myself, as a chubby young piano student with thick glasses and little in the way of social skills.  ”If they can do it, so can I.”

I never did learn to play jazz piano, sticking instead to the classical and the sacred, but neither did I lose my appreciation for Brubeck’s combination of the popular and the cerebral in his performances and compositions; and in fact, the more I came to understand it the more I found it everywhere, in people and things that I admired.  For example, when my favorite Uncle would come to visit us from Madrid, he would sit down at the piano in the living room and play jazz entirely by ear, in a sort of broad, confident style that came from Brubeck’s era.  And as I began to appreciate old movies, I began to hear this sort of playing as it popped up in some of my favorite films, like “All About Eve” (1950) and “Rear Window” (1954) – even though the piano players in those films were not trying to be Dave Brubeck, of course.

Although I own a number of Brubeck albums containing both his original compositions and covers/variations, I must admit that my favorite is “Dave Digs Disney” (1957).  In this recording, the Quartet explores songs from Disney movies, including “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “Pinocchio”, “Alice in Wonderland”, and “Cinderella”, among others.  Through the course of the album they take the Disney musical themes and run with them in some creative and innovative ways, a mixture of childlike simplicity with musical complexity and virtuosity, that is truly extraordinary to listen to.

When I was little “Cinderella” was my favorite Disney cartoon, as I dearly loved the two mice Jacques and Gus, and the Quartet’s version of “So This Is Love”, from that film is a real treat for me every time I listen.  There is again a confident but tempered swing in this recording, particularly in Brubeck’s playing, that is paradoxically both smart and popular at the same time.  After Paul Desmond’s portion about midway through the piece, Brubeck gets to have three chances to present his own variations.  Each one builds upon the last, until the third and final variation is just a full-out expression of joy in playing beautiful music on a beautiful instrument.  If you have never heard this composition before, go find it and wait for this moment nearing the end of the piece, and you will see what I mean – and ironically, it did not make the cut on the original release!

As a final note, Brubeck converted to Catholicism a number of years ago, when he was approached to compose the musical settings for the mass.  At the time he was of no particular religious faith, but was so inspired by the experience of composing the “Our Father”, as he described in an interview, that he crossed the Tiber.  Among the many awards he received in his lifetime was the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame at the 2006 Commencement, in recognition for his contributions to the Church and to society.  His brief speech accepting the award, which he kept short so that he could play for the audience, is as follows:

Thank you so much. When I first came into the stadium, I heard a wonderful sound. It was the Concert Band. And I said to myself, ‘”Why didn’t I bring the music I wrote for the Pope that was really for 21 brass?” These guys could really cut that. The reason I wrote it for 21 brass is we were honoring Pope John Paul II in the baseball stadium called Candlestick Park – 72,000 people. And I knew if I had violins and woodwinds, they wouldn’t be heard, but brass…… man, you can hear the brass.

We were supposed to do my Mass with the Pope, but just before that was to start, they informed me that they wanted nine minutes of special music while the Pope came into the stadium in the popemobile. I said, ‘”Well, where is the text?” And they said, “‘Upon this rock, I will build my church and the jaws of Hell cannot prevail against it.” And I said, “‘You want nine minutes on one sentence?” So I turned them down and went to bed and woke up and said, ‘”I know how to do it. I’ll do it like Bach would have done it.” You can use the same sentence over and over if you do a chorale and fugue, and that’s what I did.

Now one of the most nervous days, outside of today, was that day. And all of a sudden, there was kind of a silence when 72,000 people weren’t buzzing and talking. And I looked up and the Pope was looking right at us in the orchestra, the brass. My conductor came over and sat by me on the piano bench and I said, ‘”Did he bless us, or what?” He said, “‘I think he was learning to conduct in 4/4.” Well, it all went very well, but someday Id like to hear it here. It belongs here.

Now I had some kind of serious classical pieces to choose from to play the piano and I’m not going to play any of them. Because you people are going out into the world and you need a piece called “‘Travelin’ Blues.”

Forgive me for saying so, but how cool is THAT?

It is now our turn to wish Mr. Brubeck well, as he travels on his own way to meet his Heavenly Father.  We may feel a bit blue in having lost him, of course.  Yet his smart, cheerful, beautiful music will remain with us, even as we wait to get in and listen to him playing in that magnificent celestial jam session.

Dave

R.I.P. Dave Brubeck (1920-2012)

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September 17, 2012 · 11:40 am

Never As Good?

With some regularity, I have a habit of listening to song lyrics addressing one topic, and seeing how they could be re-interpreted to address another.  In the song “Never As Good As The First Time” for example, pop-jazz singer Sade croons about how nostalgia for the past, the good memories and thoughts of what might have been, always seems better than starting over again with second chances.  ”The rose we remember,” she sings, “the thorns we forget.”  I have always thought rather a nice turn of phrase.

Now, this is not merely an excuse for me to plant a song earworm in your head, gentle reader.  Rather, I would like you to consider whether in the present age, we increasingly look at the world around us as a series of compartmentalized experiences of either roses or thorns, when the truth is that both are essential parts of the whole.  This is true not only in the romantic, as this pop song points out, but also in the broader questions of life reflecting on society as a whole, and our role within it.

This weekend I had three separate, rather long conversations with three different friends in three different cities and time zones, about the question of living out one’s purpose in life. When one is no longer young but not old YET, as Mac and Katherine Barron like to put it on the “Catholic in a Small Town” podcast, certain doors are closed. It is almost guaranteed that if you are now over 30 and have never played tennis in years, you will not now be able to dethrone Roger Federer from the top of the heap. At the same time, you are not going to be toddling your way down the hallway on a Zimmer frame for many, many years yet, so to become despondent over this realization would be the height of self-obsession.

One thing which came to light during all three of these conversations was a common perspective of a sense of uncertainty about the future, as compared to what people experienced in the past. Grandfather started working for a certain company as a young man, and stayed there for decades until his retirement, when he received his gold watch and his pension. That world in many places is already long gone; those of us in Gen X or Gen Y will most likely never experience it.  Yet however much we may bemoan the death of some of the virtues which made Grandfather’s life seemingly more certain, we compartmentalize what he went through in the Depression and World War II.

This present life promises us only one absolute, unavoidable truth, and that is that there are always going to be barbarians at the gate. It may be illness, or heartbreak, or disappointment, but it will indeed come, with the ultimate reward of leaving this life entirely.  What has happened in the Western world is particular in the second half of the 20th century, is that a majority grew up not really knowing what it was like to be hungry and cold, stalked by disease, armies, or other predators.

This is why what we see going on in places like Ireland, Spain, or Greece is so shocking to many of us in the West, even though the kinds of misery we presently see are as nothing compared to what people in the Third World go through all the time, with no hope of relief.  It is also why the Third World in so many respects is much tougher than the First: for they expect disappointment, and while they hope they will make it through today, they have no illusions that they will be cheating suffering and death of their due.  We have grown too lazy in assuming that comfort is something we are entitled to, rather than privileged to receive.

Yesterday at mass Monsignor used the Gospel reading as a jumping-off point for the exploration of these ideas of uncertainty and suffering.  We are no doubt familiar with Christ’s rebuke of St. Peter who, shortly after declaring Jesus to be the Son of God, then takes Him aside to upbraid Him for talking about His forthcoming suffering and death.  Christ then turns on him and rebukes him in front of the other disciples, warning them that if they expected to be His followers, they were going to have to accept suffering.  In his homily, Monsignor pointed out that no one likes to talk about the experience of uncertainty and suffering, or ultimately death, but Christ tells us that it is in how we accept our trials that we prove our worth.

This was further echoed in the reading at Lauds this morning, for the great Jewish heroine Judith points out to her people in the midst of a terrible crisis that:

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God who, as he tested our ancestors, is now testing us. Remember how he treated Abraham, all the ordeals of Isaac and all that happened to Jacob. For as these ordeals were intended by him to search their hearts, so now this is not vengeance that God exacts against us, but a warning inflicted by the Lord on those who are near his heart.

Judith 8: 25-26, 27

Returning to Sade, who of course is speaking of romantic love in this song rather than about the overall purpose of one’s life, reflection on what might have been and what is “rightfully” ours is a deadly exercise.  Too many spend their lives trying to recapture a moment when everything seemed wonderful and new. Or they use the irritation of suffering and loss in their lives, in the mistaken belief that by so doing they are making some sort of pearl, when in reality they are merely creating an ulcer which will eventually perforate. The line between the formation of each of these is very slim, indeed.

There is of course nothing pleasant about experiencing pain, suffering, setbacks, and loss, but we will experience all of them. If you believe that you will have everything easy in your life from now on, you are exceedingly naive and ill-prepared for what lies ahead.  Better to stay focused on the task ahead, of using your gifts and abilities for the greater good of others, in recognition of and preparation for the life to come.  It may not always be as good as the first time one experiences that thrill of something good – a first dance, a first touchdown, a first job, a first apartment – but at least we will take the future as it comes, without staying stuck in the past.


Still from the video for “Never As Good As The First Time” by Sade

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April 25, 2012 · 11:54 am

Our Body of Work

Regular readers know that I often encourage you to look more closely at the environment you live in, and observe the details around you. This is part of your ongoing duty as an educated adult. I realize that a number of my readers are not Christians, let alone Catholics, but I hope you will bear with me in today’s post, and consider some of the points I raise herein about why it is so important to continue to educate yourself, if we are to preserve the body of Western culture which has been handed down to us as a priceless gift from previous generations.

The more you study subjects such science, architecture, literature, and so on, the more you realize that you are surrounded by reminders of our collective past. For example, if you give yourself a break with a Kit-Kat bar, you are eating something originally invented in England in the 1920′s, but named for a prominent London club of the 18th century. Or you might live in a town named for a Catholic saint, such as St. Louis, Missouri, or San Francisco, California. And since today is the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, he is a good jumping-off point for our consideration.

We can point to many works of art, musical compositions, schools, buildings, streets, and even entire towns named for this 1st century Jewish man, who became an important figure of the early Church. For example, Saint-Marc is an important coastal city in Haiti; Saint Mark’s Place is a popular tourist trap in the East Village in Manhattan; and the oldest military fort in the United States, the 17th century Castillo de San Marcos or “Castle of St. Mark”, is located in the city of St. Augustine, Florida – which of course is named for another Catholic saint. Bach wrote a Passion Oratario based on St. Mark’s Gospel, which composition sadly has been lost, while Irish composer Charles Wood wrote his own version while at Cambridge in the 1920′s.

For those of my readers who are not familiar with him, St. Mark was one of Jesus’ youngest disciples, a friend to St. Paul, and author of one of the Gospels. Although St. Mark was martyred in about 68 A.D. in the Egyptian city of Alexandria and buried there, in the 9th century his remains were stolen by a group of Venetian merchants and taken back to their city. The legends surrounding how this took place are interesting in and of themselves, but more importantly they created a narrative for Venice and for its empire, which was reflected in things such as city planning, public celebrations, music, literature, poetry, architecture, painting, sculpture, and so on.

As a result, there is probably a greater concentration of art related to St. Mark in Venice than in any single other city in the world. Not only is the city Cathedral, the Byzantine-Gothic style Basilica of San Marco, dedicated to him, as is the famous piazza or square in front of it, with its flocks of pigeons pooping all over the tourists, but he represents the Venetian Republic as well. Throughout Venice and in the territories which it used to control, the winged lion of St. Mark was used as the emblem of the old empire on the Adriatic, much as the bald eagle represents the United States, today.

In the books of Ezekiel and Revelation in the Bible, their respective authors wrote of heavenly visions involving four winged creatures which surround the throne of God. Christian interpreters of Scripture came to believe that these represented the four canonical Gospel writers. That which is believed to represent St. Mark, the winged lion, was chosen because St. Mark begins his Gospel with the voice of St. John the Baptist crying out in the desert, like the roar of a desert lion. Thus, Venice adopted this symbol of its patron saint as its own.

When it comes to Venetian art portraying St. Mark, the great master Tintoretto (1518-1594) is not one of my favorite painters, truth be told. I do not generally care for his work, since I often find his pictures too messy and busy, and his palette can sometimes be rather muddy. That being said, I recognize his importance in art history, both in the influence he had on the work of subsequent artists I do like, such as El Greco, but also in that he did paint some interesting works from time to time.

In the mid-16th century, Tintoretto produced a rather brilliant series of four paintings on scenes from the life of St. Mark for the Scuola di San Marco charitable institution, which of course was named for the saint.  One of the paintings from this series which has always fascinated me is Tintoretto’s portrayal of the stealing of the Evangelist’s body from its tomb in Alexandria.  It is a dramatic scene, but an example of how the artistic imagination can take a story and run with it, not seeking to portray reality but rather to explore different ideas and concepts in art, architecture, and science.

Rather than have the figures in the scene carrying a coffin or reliquary containing the bones of St. Mark, Tintoretto portrays them as carrying the full-sized body of the saint, who is looking rather buff despite being dead for over 800 years. Alexandria itself looks nothing like 9th century Egypt, and more like the stage set of an idealized city by the great Venetian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, a contemporary of Tintoretto’s – all perfect proportions, arcaded palaces, and vanishing sight lines. A further dramatic touch is provided by having the night sky split with threatening thunderstorms against a blood-red sky, including a rather spectacular display of lightning which is causing passersby to flee to the colonnades for shelter in what looks like a choreographed dance.

After considering all of the forgoing, the reader can see my point about why there is so much more to be seen in something like a painting than might first meet the eye. If you were to go to the Accademia and admire this painting, you might be able to appreciate it for what it is, and decide whether or not you like the picture based purely on aesthetics. However, a student of cultural history realizes that there is a great deal more at work here than simply the creation of an image. In this one piece one can point to all sorts of threads that led to its creation: The Bible, optics, linear perspective, anatomical study, Mediterranean trade routes, the decline of the Byzantine Empire, and so on.

This is why it is important not just to accept what you see at face value, but to take some time to think about what you are seeing. Otherwise, we reach the point where people wallow in their stupidity, being unwilling to acknowledge with humility that they have more to learn, rather than seeking to do their best to overcome it. We have been given a rich inheritance of human achievement, which will be lost if we do not study and preserve our culture for future generations, and by adding to it ourselves. Otherwise, the body of work which we hand on to them really will be putrid and decayed.


“The Theft of the Body of St. Mark” by Tintoretto (1548)
Gallerie dell’ Accademia, Venice

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April 24, 2012 · 10:51 am

The Genius of Studious Creativity

A piece in Art News caught my eye this morning, regarding two exhibitions in Hartford that will no doubt appeal to those of you who love photography, as well as those who love painting.  American photographer James Welling has assembled a group of photographs he has taken that are related to the work of the great American realist painter Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), and they are being shown in juxtaposition with an exhibition of Wyeth’s paintings at the Wadsworth Atheneum. Both shows run until July 22nd, though I want to focus particularly on how Welling’s creativity as demonstrated in his show, was in part fostered by his study of Wyeth’s own creative output, and how this is a not-uncommon feature of the arts.

Some of Welling’s photographs depict locations which will be familiar to fellow admirers of Wyeth, such as the old farmhouse that appears in the distance of Wyeth’s iconic painting, “Christina’s World”, which is probably his best-known work.  Other photographs are not directly related to a specific painting, but rather represent elements or passages that are thematically reflective of Wyeth’s way of looking at his environment.  Welling therefore is not simply trying to record for posterity a particular place, but rather to show Wyeth’s influence on his own artistic process, and how he has taken that example and gone off in his own direction.

We see this pattern of reference, variation, and creation in many areas of artistic output.  For example, the mid-19th century French composer Charles Gounod took the early 18th century composer Johann Sebastian Bach’s 1st Prelude from the “Well-Tempered Clavier”, and improvised his version of the “Ave Maria” to be sung over the top of it.  Similarly Picasso studied Velázquez’ masterpiece, the enigmatic “Las Meninas” of 1656 which is now in The Prado in Madrid, and in 1957 produced a series of paintings disassembling it which now fill the “Las Meninas Room” at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona.

One aspect of Welling’s work that viewers will find particularly interesting is not only its documentation of the places Wyeth saw and how they have and have not changed over time, but also the fact that Wyeth did not always paint exactly what his eye saw. In “Christina’s World”, Wyeth rearranged the farm buildings from where they stood in real life, in order to make his composition more pleasing. This a technique used by many artists over the centuries to bring balance to their pictures.

As it happens, this is something that photographers have done from the beginning of the development of their craft as well, and long before the invention of tools like Photoshop to make such manipulation easier. Yesterday in fact, I had a conversation with a senior magazine researcher about the influence of Samuel F.B. Morse on American Civil War photographer Mathew Brady. Morse is probably better-known to my readers as the man credited with inventing the telegraph and Morse code, yet he was also a talented and formally-educated painter. As was common among all academicians of his time, Morse spent a great deal of time observing, sketching, taking life drawing classes, and re-arranging objects to create his compositions.

Brady studied painting with Morse in New York prior to the Civil War, who himself had studied classical composition in Europe and was admitted to the Royal Academy in London. It is not a surprise, therefore, to learn that in many of the battlefield photographs attributed to Brady and his studio, the elements of the images were moved around or re-positioned in order to make a more compelling final product. For example, men who had died face-down were turned over, or their eyes and mouths might be closed. Artillery or vehicles were rearranged to create a balanced composition, even though as a result it would not be an accurate record for the military brass of how their soldiers had used or left these items.

In some ways the egalitarian nature of photography, as compared to the seemingly elitist nature of painting, has led to the idea in some quarters that painting realistic subjects is irrelevant. For example over the weekend I was watching a report about a new show on abstract portraiture opening at an art foundation in Paris, in which the curator of the exhibition opined that the main reason portraiture changed was the advent of the photographic camera. When a camera could quickly and more cheaply capture the image of an individual, he reasoned, the need for realistic painting evaporated.

Yet this rather flippant assertion overlooks the genius of what great art has always been, if my bluntness will be forgiven, regardless of the medium employed, and that is the fact that you yourself cannot produce it. Anyone can sit down at a piano and plunk out “Heart and Soul” given a little instruction; a scant few of us could sit down and employ the technically complicated leaping and bounding required for the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto with anything approaching competency. Similarly, anyone can take a photograph, but not anyone can produce a competent one, let alone a great one.  The relative ease of photography as a process does not mean that all photographers are capable of producing great images: there has to be an artistic eye, and an understanding of light and composition.

In this case of course, Mr. Welling is indeed a great photographer, not just your Dad taking snapshots of your 8th birthday party. He is someone who has had the way he looks at his environment shaped by great painters like Wyeth. In this he is a part of a tradition which includes predecessors like Morse and Brady, Bach and Gounod, and so on, where creative minds from different generations or even from different centuries employ both observation and their own unique creative skills to come up with something wonderful.


“Christina’s World” by Andrew Wyeth (1948)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

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April 16, 2012 · 10:51 am

Goya and the Feet of Clay

We are often given the impression that artists of all sorts are operating at a level far above that of mere mortals, being so much more sophisticated than we are.  Certainly their creativity and way of putting things together to create a whole, which can communicate a universal truth or experience, is something marvelous to behold when the artist is actually talented, and not a purveyor of the Emperor’s New Clothes.  Yet paradoxically, we can go back through history and note that there are great numbers of writers, painters, entertainers, and so on who put more faith in human beings than experience and common sense would warrant.

For example, today happens to be the day when the great Spanish Romantic painter, Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), shuffled off this mortal coil.  During a convivial brunch yesterday after mass, my dining companion and I discussed his work, particularly the so-called “Black Paintings” in The Prado – which I love despite, or perhaps because of, their other-worldly creepiness.  However there is a different way to look at the art of Romantics of great intellectual capabilities and artistic output like Goya, Beethoven, and others who came to worship man as a substitute for God – if indeed, they worshiped God at all – and that is to think of them as children.

The mistake many artists make, whether Goya and Beethoven in their day, or Hollywood and the contemporary art establishment in ours, is believing that human beings can solve all of the world’s problems, if only they pick the correct leaders, and agree to work together in some sort of secular-humanist cooperative.  This idea is rubbish, as history has proven over and over again, from the Tower of Babel to the Kyoto Protocols. Among others things, the notion that human beings are going to act selflessly out of mutual interest and not out of religious conviction ignores man’s inherent tendencies toward selfishness, laziness, and ignorance, when the Eternal is pushed entirely out of the picture – and, let’s face it, sometimes even when people claim He is in the picture.

No matter how gifted, intelligent, or sophisticated they might have been, many of these people never actually became adults.  They believed whole-heartedly in the power of man, as an independent and ever-rational actor, and were disappointed to find man lacking.  The clay-footed Napoleon in particular disillusioned a great many creative types in this period, not least including Goya and Beethoven, who thought that a secular Jerusalem was about to descend from some Corsican hilltop.

In a way this type of blind faith in created things calls to mind, on a pop culture level, a scene in the popcorn film “Independence Day”.  Early on in the movie when the alien ships begin to arrive, a group of what we would recognize today as “truther” types gather on the rooftop of the U.S. Bank tower in downtown Los Angeles.  They ignore the very sound advice of authorities that they ought to stay away, and act with prudence, until the intentions of these visitors are known.  Instead, like the immature children they are, the members of the self-appointed alien welcoming committee indulge in a kind of Woodstock-like joy as the ships open, asking that they be taken up inside.  They discover, too late, that these supposedly enlightened beings are actually more than just a little bit hostile, and they want to wipe out the entire human race.

To be fair, what most of us would consider to be normal, those of an artistic bent often consider boring.  When things do not go as planned however, most of us tend to deal with these disasters as adults, picking up the pieces and moving on.  When the disasters are more epic in scope, we do our best to care for those whom we need to care for, and put aside philosophical concerns for practical ones.  Most of the time, our disasters do not involve wars, plagues, and so on, but the little things that can bring us low.

We send a payment in the mail, and it gets delayed or lost. We are just getting over the flu, when a family member gives us a sore throat.  We finally get around to mowing the lawn, and a host of weeds pop up in the garden seemingly from nowhere.   It may be conventional, and it may not be interesting, but without recognition that these things happen, and that we simply cannot fall apart every time we hit a roadblock or something goes pear-shaped, then we have no possibility of behaving with maturity.

In fact, one of the benefits of reaching maturity is the realization that nothing is ever going to work out perfectly for us in this life, for just when you have solved one problem, another has popped up somewhere else.  Most of us who are functioning adults understand that placing too much faith in the physical world, and what man can achieve by his own efforts, is inevitably going to lead to disappointments.  Those with a creative mindset on the other hand, are not always good at understanding this, and particularly when they put their faith in human beings, who have never shown themselves to be entirely trustworthy.

This is not to disparage the childlike curiosity and delight that one can find in a sprightly musical composition or an off-beat film, for we need these things if we are to build a culture.  However it bears keeping in mind that creativity alone, even when it is harsh and unflinching, is no guarantee of maturity of thought.  We are weak, feeble things; if we do not believe there is a higher authority than some sort of planned utopia coming from an executive committee of human brains, then we are probably not going to behave very well towards one another, at least not voluntarily, and the whole thing collapses.

Goya certainly came to understand this, as he saw his illusions crumble one by one, which is one reason why his art is so captivating, covering death and destruction, sickness, madness, and ultimately his OWN death.  However the best thing to take away from the work of Romantic artists like Goya, and indeed from any artistic production that seems rather bleak and hopeless, is that you are not doomed to the same fate. Putting your trust in things beyond yourself, rather than in your fellow, fallible, human beings, is a sounder way of dealing with all of the garbage, great or small, which life is going to throw at you.


“He Can Do No More at 98 Years” by Goya (c. 1801-1803)
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

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