Having enjoyed seeing Francisco Goya’s masterpiece The Disasters of War at the London Museum I wanted to create a work which resonated with the series. I was drawn to the image that has become most recognisable, in part due to the Chapman brothers’ work, plate 39 titled Great deeds! Against the dead! Instead of altering the characters as the Chapmans have in their work such as Sex I (2003), Great Deeds Against the Dead! (1994), Year Zero (1996) amongst others, I thought that since the scene is now etched into the gallery going public’s memory I could remove the tortured souls altogether. In fact I suspect that the scene would continue to be associated with the horror Goya concocted even in a tranquil watercolour, which I might try next. At this stage I’ve started an ink pointillist style drawing which should imitate the aquatint effect used by Goya. In the image gallery I’ve included a drawing I’d completed earlier of a lighthouse which shows the effect I’m aiming for.
The erasing of the corpses should bring to mind the original work, as Brian Dillion (2006) wrote in his paper published in Tate Etc erasure is never complete, it leaves behind “some reminder of the violence done to make the world look new again”. My work is not strictly speaking erasure, or palimpsestic (the erasure and re-use of parchment) it is a redrawing with censorship as all art surely is. In the article Dillion considers the altered imagery of Russian Communist Party where they erased from history disgraced party members, like Nikolai Yezhov. However my intent is not to forget or pretend that inhumane atrocities don’t happen but to highlight the violence by tapping into the viewers memory.
Derrida (1980) wrote about an “undecidable truth and fiction of every erased stroke”, my erasure of Goya’s victims generates many possible readings of the image. Other than my intention for the observer to be reminded of the original it could be a suggestion that Goya never actually witnessed this event, as some have alluded to (Hughes, Hofer, etc). After all the tree is unnatural, it has handy branches acting as footrests enabling the scene to be composed by barbarians with an artistic eye. Another reading might suggest that it represents an alternative reality where inhumanity doesn’t exist. Or maybe it represent the same tree today, or possibly the day before the incident occurred.
Anyway, now that I’ve seen my ink sketch alongside the original I think I might start again, my proportions are not spot on (I freehanded the sketch without gridding out the images which was a mistake – although the angle the photograph was taken at exaggerates this), and I’m not sure that the dot effect is what I’m looking for either, I think I’ll try a line drawing with ink wash next.
