Wouldn’t we all love to have Michael Kimmelman’s job? Today he reports from Madrid on The Prado’s exhibition, Goya in Times of War. Not only does he travel throughout Europe, but he chats with interesting artists. “The sculptor Richard Serra saw the Goya show recently and told me, with a kind of rapture, that he was amazed by all the different ways Goya painted white. ‘The Third of May,’ in particular, depends on whites: under a black sky, the white of the shirt of the captive who kneels before the firing squad, arms flung open, is illuminated by the glare of the square yellow-white lantern before him. The picture�s punctum, the detail that lingers in the mind after registering the bloody pulp of the dead man�s head in the foreground and the silent rows of bayonets and shakos, focused on their victim, is the semicircle of white in the Spaniard�s eye, disbelieving, beseeching.” Read more.
“Goya in Times of War,” The Prado, Madrid, Spain. Through July 13.
