The Black Paintings of Goya, Part 1: El Perro (The Dog)

1. Introduction

My wife and I spent a month in Madrid this summer.  We studied Spanish at a language school; included in the program were several tours, one of them a visit to the Prado.  The guide, the director of the school, knows his art and frequently gives tours to young, adolescent Spanish students.  In our group, the members of which were all of retirement age, the knowledge of Spanish varied.  The guide was apparently saying the same things he said to the Spanish kids. This, combined with with fact that he had to speak very slowly and clearly made us feel like kids again, and not very bright ones at that.  It was a delight.  He gave us a good analysis of the works of El Greco and Velasquez, including the latter's famous Las Meninas.  There was much more to be seen, so we returned a few days later.

I headed straight for the Goyas. All of them were first-rate; his last compositions, however, were especially fascinating. I knew very little about these so-called black paintings except that they were world-famous.  All of them, originally painted as murals onto the walls of Goya's villa, had been transferred onto canvas and fill an entire room at the museum.  I was intrigued by these grotesque pictures of a world full of greed, debased by a rampant lust for power and distorted by a near-total lack of love.  The modern world?  Exaggerated perhaps, but these extraordinary paintings are, unfortunately,  a lot closer to the truth than works by, say, Renoir. They affected me deeply, as they have affected many in much the same way.  The reaction I had to one of them, however, was much more intense; it moved me to the quick.

At the back wall was a painting, El Perro, The Dog, the only one of the black paintings that isn't depicted using somber tones; the dominant color is a fiery ochre.  Utterly amazed,  I stood before it, boca abierta, for a long time. 

This is the first modern painting, I said to myself.  It marks the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.  Just as a wall of fire ensured that Adam and Eve could never return to Eden, the fiery ochre of this painting assures that no one can return to previous ages of belief without sacrificing intellect.   It is, in my opinion, a tremendously important painting; why I'm convinced this is so is the subject of this essay.

First a few words about the painter. I will be brief and emphasize only information that is helpful for the understanding of this essay; a wealth of information about Goya  can be found by any interested person in a library or online. Francisco Goya (1746-1828) deservedly ranks among the very best artists Spain has produced.  He began his career closely connected to Spanish royalty on whose patronage he depended.  Royal commissions continued into the 1800s, but something had changed.  In 1793-1794 Goya suffered a serious illness, the exact nature of which is unknown.  He became deaf and lost his sense of balance; voices and sounds in his head drove him to the brink of insanity.  After his recovery, his vision darkened.  It's as if Goya began his career as Bob Hope and ended it as George Carlin.  He did not eschew the fantastic or the macabre, but never was grotesque merely to shock: an outraged humanity underlies the best works of his maturity, even when, or especially when, his imagination took flight well beyond the conventions of the early nineteenth century. The last of the old masters and the first of the modern, Goya's work sometimes soars and sometimes dives deep.  It reminds me of the saying of a Hasidic rabbi of the nineteenth century: The middle of the road is for horses.

Some of the more famous works of his later period include Charles IV and His Family from 1800, a biting satirical portrait of the corrupt royal family--did they remain unaware of the striking "lack of visual diplomacy" in this work which they had commissioned? His later works include the very disturbing Disasters of War and Los Caprichos which depict, in Goya's own words, "The innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance or self-interest have made usual."  One of the most important compositions of his maturity is the iconic The Third of May 1808, completed in 1814; this portrayal of Spanish peasants being slaughtered by Polish troops under French command is perhaps the greatest anti-war painting ever painted.  

The savagery of the Peninsular War (1807-1814) waged by the French; the dashing of hopes for a more liberal society after the Bourbon restoration, the suppressive nature of which had a grand ally in the Catholic Church, turned Goya into one of the most biting, bitterest and most astute artists of all time.

In 1814, at the age of 75, Goya retired to a villa near Madrid, the Quinta del Sordo (House of The Deaf Man--named after the previous owner, not after Goya, who was deaf as well.)  Despair over the current state of Europe, combined with declining mental and physical health, led him to withdraw from society.  His artistry however, if anything, deepened.  He painted onto the walls of the villa fourteen murals, the so-called black paintings, which were never meant to be shown publicly.  In fact, he wrote no notes regarding these paintings, leading to very diverse interpretations. The works depict a macabre world of runaway greed, lust for power and the utter  lack of love.  The only exception to this artistic stance among the black paintings is El Perro, a work which we will now discuss. (The black paintings were transferred to canvas fifty years after Goya's death; this process resulted in some loss of detail and in some distortions.)

2. El Perro

Why do I consider this painting the first modern painting?--By the way, I am apparently not alone in this view; I read later that other critics have had a similar opinion.  Some have noted its striking originality--without the dog's head, the work is perhaps the first abstract painting ever; with the dog's head one clearly sees that this composition paved the way to surrealism as well.  It is the "message" of this painting, however, that makes it modern, a watershed in the history of art. This essay will focus on its thematic content, namely, the absurdity of expecting divine intervention to alleviate suffering and to resolve the predicament of existence.

Critics have written that El Perro is the most enigmatic and problematic of all of the fourteen black paintings.  To me, its message is clear. We see a dog's head; his body is buried or at least hidden by a terrain that curves upward.  (This upward movement which underscores the movement of the dog's head is an element from classical composition.)  Some have imagined that the dog is drowning in quicksand and is about to go under.  Goya gave no corroboration of this.  However, it is obvious that the poor creature is about to disappear.  The terrain is completely devoid of any additional sign of life; the dog is completely alone in a desert-like environment.  The doomed animal looks expectantly upwards for help from above.  The painting, in its austere depiction of a wasteland that presumably extends beyond the canvas in all directions, indicates strongly that no help will arrive.  The dog will soon be gone forever. It is a stark and honest representation of the human condition.  It reminds me of the title of a powerful German novel, Jeder stirbt für sich allein--Everyone dies alone.

This painting reflects a turning point in human history. For thousands of years, the belief was widespread in the Western world, among intellectuals and everyone else, that human destiny, both in a collective and in a personal sense,  was in the control of a personal God.  The Enlightenment, which undermined this view, lasted from the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century; this seminal period came to an end just before Goya painted El Perro.  Before the Enlightenment it was acceptable that a man of Augustine's, of Maimonides's or of Aquinas's intellect would be a theologian or at least a devout believer, as all these men were; after the Enlightenment, persons of equivalent stature would much more likely be scientists or secular philosophers.  Galileo challenged the religious mindset with his emphasis on science and the necessity of examining everything through the alembics of reason; the Church and all forms of religious literalism have been in retreat ever since.  Modern Europe is not only post-Christian, it is, with the exception of many yet-to-be assimilated immigrants, post-God. Theology, once thought to be the queen of all categories of knowledge, is now a homeless beggar.

Prehistorical humans were not able to differentiate between what lay within and what lay without.  Personality, then and now, was very strongly felt and was projected automatically onto natural phenomena.  Nothing was impersonal; the gods were behind lightning, thunder, rain and the wind.  The personification of elements of nature was experienced so strongly that religion, the belief that there was a deity behind the phenomenal world,  remained unchallenged for centuries--until the scientific method called it into question.  Literal religious belief is now more or less restricted to the less educated.  We can accept Augustine's literal interpretation of the Old Testament, which was not an absurd position for an intellect of his era; any educated person, trained in the scientific method, who takes such a position today strikes one as being quaint or perhaps even crazy. A symbolic understanding of religious myths, is, of course, another matter.

3, El Perro's Expression

Goya painted the dog, which obviously represents humankind, with human features.  There is no parody here; Goya's compassion for the dog's predicament is evident.  We think of dogs as devoted creatures, "faithful dogs," and as not very bright creatures as well, "dumb dogs." I am confident that Goya intended the viewer to be aware of both of these aspects.  He found it perhaps both moving, sad and inevitable that human beings would still look to the skies for an answer--a doomed-to-fail quest that would continue its windmill-chasing until the truths of science became incorporated in the minds of the general populace. (Which hasn't fully happened yet!) We know of many anecdotes of dogs lying on their masters' graves, expecting their loved ones to somehow return.  The chances of their returning are the same as that of the Master, who in fact never existed, coming down from the sky to save el perro from annihilation.

Before I present a close-up of el perro's expression, I would like to say a few words about how imminent death was depicted in the past.  Critics have said that there is no true tragedy in Christian art, since death, especially martyrdom, was viewed merely as a passage from pain to paradise.  Look at the expressions of the saints about to be slaughtered in this typical painting, (Correggio, 1489-1534, The Martyrdom of Four Saints.) They are looking up to heaven, much as el perro does, but with a beatific expression on their faces; they are convinced they are about to receive an ecstatic, eternal reward.  Pious Germans would call these cliched expressions of anticipated delight "selig" or "holy;" the English cognate is, you guessed it, "silly."

The Ancient Greeks were different.  (Pictured below is a detail from the sculpture, Laocoon and His Sons, attributed to Agesander of Rhodes; it is located in the Vatican Museum.)  Observe the face of Laocoon while being suffocated by serpents along with his two sons:

No silly/selig expression here; this is a depiction of raw suffering.  Nobody is going to save Laocoon, and he knows it.

Now let us turn our attention to el perro's face.

How subtle this simple portrait is!  The dog faces imminent death like the Christian saints; unlike them, however, this dog has his doubts.  His ears are cocked, ready to turn to the slightest sound from above.  His eyes are wide-open and staring fixedly at the spot where he hopes his Master will finally arrive.  The intensity of his stance is quite striking.  He is not suffering physically like Laocoon--if he were in quicksand, one would think there would be signs of struggle; el perro seems to have given up struggling altogether. He completely lacks the faith of the Christian martyrs in things unseen; for him, seeing is believing.  The dog hasn't seen God yet; the viewer, who sees the whole picture, knows he never will.  The dog's unanswered quest for redemption arises from his desperate situation: in better times this human dog, unlike the saints, would have most likely turned his attention to mundane things.

Goya's message is clear.  First, we poor mortal dogs deserve compassion.  Second, we who see the whole picture know that it is a waste of time to seek solace from an imaginary friend.  From now on, Goya seems to be telling us, genuine consolation can only come from one's fellow humans, one's nature, one's wisdom, one's friends. The modern era has begun.

4. El Perro's cosmos

This is not the cosmos of Christmas carols.  It is vaster; it is impersonal; it is scientific.  Previously in paintings, the sky merely framed the more important human activity taking place below.  If the sky took up more space, it was usually filled with mythical creatures or defined by flocks of birds.  Here the sky takes full stage--and the stage is empty.  Sky extends about seventy-five percent of the way down the right margin; on the left, it extends much further than that.  This is perhaps the first painting that clearly illustrates that human beings are not the center of the universe--space is both the center and the periphery. This is not a humanized sky; there are no clouds, no stars, no moon, no birds.  It looks to me rather like an anticipation, by a century and a half, of an image of the cosmic background radiation, a representation of the cosmos when it was composed completely of radiation. It is the polar opposite of the traditional Christian view, as expressed in a Gospel tune as follows:

Farther along we will see Jesus
come from his mansion up in the sky...

The mythological world, even if believed in literally, was always experienced as something immediate, since it exists (only) inside; one always has immediate access to one's own inner life.  The real world, as depicted by physics, is a good deal more remote and abstract.  The traditional cosmos was already undermined by Goya's time.  The speed of light was discovered in the seventeenth century.  The concept of a heliocentric universe died with Galileo.  Kant and others envisioned a universe of truly immense proportions which was constantly being recycled.  Human beings were no longer at the center of the universe; God was no longer above it.

I find significance in the colors of the painting as well.  They are all related.  The ground looks a bit like a solidification of the sky; the dog looks like something in between, an interrelationship that has both scientific and spiritual validity.  

The dog is lost in the cosmic vastness, but he doesn't quite know it.  His severely tested faith still hopes that the universe will address him personally.  But the viewer knows better.  He realizes that there are no borders to the painting and that the landscape and skyscape will continue in the same way on all sides, just as space continues in the same way on all sides, if not forever, than at least for unimaginably long stretches.  Although the dog desperately refuses to believe it, there is nothing special about his location.  A yawning, infinite indifference surrounds him.

4. El Perro's Consolation

He doesn't see it, but we do.

What would Goya's painting be without the head of the dog? An abstract, amateur painting without anything to hold the viewer's attention.  Even though the head is tiny and not at the center of the painting, it is indeed the most important part of the composition.

It is important to note that only the head is visible, the seat of the brain, the seat of the greatest unknown/known natural wonder, consciousness.  Here Goya illustrates not only the fragility of humanity, but its glory as well.  It is astounding that the vast universe fits, as it were, inside the human skull.  We can describe the cosmos in great detail via the "miracle" of language; we can delve even deeper via the "miracle" of mathematics.  That human beings who have evolved on a tiny speck of land are able, via these two languages, to obtain an understanding of the vast whole is, well, beyond amazement.

We moderns have an even greater appreciation for that little dog.  As modern physics asserts, the role of consciousness is fundamental to reality.  It plays an essential, well demonstrated yet inexplicable role in determining quantum realities--and quantum realities are the foundation of everything we perceive.  Consciousness is everything, as the great mathematician, John von Neumann wrote.  

One of the wildest theories- wilder than any mythology religion has ever produced--is the so-called Top Down Cosmology theory proposed by Stephen Hawking.  I will briefly summarize it.  Before the Big Bang everything "existed" in a quantum state; there were many possibilities, each of which able to  become a reality.  It is our consciousness that chose the quantum state that has become our world.  In other words, consciousness not only creates the present, but also created the past!  This theory certainly isn't proven, but it gives one a good idea of the primacy of consciousness asserted by many physicists today.

The old question about whether sound occurs when a tree falls without a listener in earshot has been rendered obsolete.  It is the brain that interprets vibrations of certain frequencies as sound; without a brain there is no sound.  If it is true that consciousness creates everything, there aren't even disturbances in the air without the brain.

This also gives new life to an albeit nontraditional view of religion.  God--a metaphor just as the individual self is a metaphor--exists within.  If, as some physicists assert, in accord with Hinduism, that consciousness is fundamental to everything, inside and outside become interchangeable.  If God exists within and inside is outside, well then, an impersonal God exists in a certain sense in the outside world as well.  A caveat here: consciousness may indeed be the creator of everything, but its determinations of reality have nothing to do with human volition.  The choice of what becomes reality is always an impersonal one. 

It is admittedly sad that everything in life  must be paid for.  The mind might seem immortal, but the body that gives rise to it, much as a radio enables one to hear music, is not.  This duality constitutes the glory and tragedy of mankind, so subtly demonstrated by Goya's little masterpiece.

5. The Poem

El Perro

Between quicksand earth and a blind, ochre sky,
I look and find no one to take me home;
I am alone.  I wish there were a leash.

I wrote this little poem on the night after I first experienced the painting, several hours earlier.  It is human to want a cosmic connection, even if it is via a leash wielded by a tyrant, benevolent in some aspects, but a tyrant nevertheless.  Goya, as mentioned previously, paints a representation of this desire with  great sympathy, but his message is clear: from now on, searching for a personal God in the cosmos is beneath human dignity.  We are to walk upright, facing the world as it is, making it our own by the transcendent, invisible bonds of wisdom and love; leashes are for dogs.




Summary

El Perro, the first modern painting, which reveals so much so economically, is a true masterpiece; its innovative technique, and, perhaps more important, its seminal content, give little El Perro a substantive place in the history of art.