Webster describes family as “parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not. 2. The children of one person or one couple collectively. 3. The spouse and children of one person. 4. Any group of persons closely related by blood, as parents, children, uncles, aunts, and cousins. 5. All those persons considered as descendants of a common progenitor. 6. A group of persons who form a household, esp. under one head.”

Think about yours.

A family traditionally shares a living space, meals, activities, feelings, money, a car, and many items used in daily life. A family loves, works, plays, travels, shares, argues, fights, steals, kills and forgives. Sometimes.

In 1789 Francesco Goya y Lucientes became the court painter to Charles IV, having previously served under his father Charles III. In June, 1800, Goya completed the portrait studies of the ten members of the royal family. He then returned to his Madrid studio where he composed this extremely large and unflattering painting, basing the scale and the prominence of the figures on previous notes and drawings, and organizing, by rank, the King and his eldest son, Ferdinand VII, stepping out from the others.

HOWEVER, you will notice, that the painting radiates from the Queen, Maria Luisa of Parma.

Look at her. What is Goya telling us?

Notice her mouth, smiling as though resisting a thought, tight and lacking color, with a possible under-bite common in this line of monarchs. Her gaze is distant – clearly a pose of importance and yet unengaged with the painter or the viewer. She is a solid and formidable statue.

Goya’s loose painting style is obvious here – his emphasis on textures, fabrics, jewels, extravagances of wealth, his details smeared, and without the translucent modeling of the flesh popular in works of his contemporaries. There are splashes, and dots, and smears, and streaks. Maria Luisa’s large arms, her double chin and puffy statue read as excess, and also authority.

This same focus on the richness of jewels and fabrics continues in the fancy hairpins of the women, the royal regalia/stole of Maria Luisa worn by the other women, and the dresses of Maria Luisa, the delicate Infanta Dona Maria Isabel, and the “fiancée”.

Fiancee??

One of the many questions: WHO is the young lady with her head turned away from her audience? 

Speculation says that she is the “to-be” fiancée of Ferdinand, but that the marriage has not been announced. OR she is the eldest daughter, Carlota Joaquina, who is now Queen of Portugal, and was unable to come for the “sitting”?

Is this clever or insulting? Would it be less awkward to leave out the important relation?

Goya was politically liberal, astute and outspoken. In 1793 an illness caused deafness and he turned inward, focusing on the ills of his world. He was the visual voice of discontent. His art reflects his resentment of the monarchy, his distaste for greed and his determination not to flatter.

Spain was stagnant. Charles IV was afraid that reform would cause revolution. He was deemed stupid and lazy by his enemies. He focused on the violin and carpentry. He abdicated under the threat of Napoleon. Does he seem tired? vacant?

What do you see in this portrait that supports your opinions? 

Has Goya portrayed him with satire and irony, as his arrogant young adult son, Ferdinand VII, steps forward? 

Read the relationship between King Charles IV and Ferdinand.

Both are looking past each other, expressions of disapproval and disinterest. What is Goya saying?

Ferdinand VII was ruthless tyrant, anxious for the throne but distrustful and disloyal. After Charles IV abdicated, and Napoleon stormed and destroyed Madrid installing his brother Joseph Bonaparte as ruler, Ferdinand reclaimed the throne. It was a weak dictatorship. The only contribution that he made to Spain was that he ordered the art stolen by Napoleon returned to Spain. (And it was already an amazing collection.) It was his second wife, Dona Isabela de Braganza of Portugal, who supported Ferdinand financially and is considered the “founder”/patroness of the Prado Museum.

What do you see in his face?

Look closely at the beautiful and loose brushwork of Goya.

And then look at Goya.

What is he looking at? This group of monarchs looking in a mirror as he paints them? (perhaps inspired by Velasquez’ “Las Meninas?”)

Could this portrait be satire, resentment (Goya owed them money), caricature, or just gossip?

There is more!

Clearly a different family in 1964…….

Marisol, the name that she chose to use, was born in Paris of Venezuelan parents. After her father’s suicide when she was 11, she quit speaking. Her art became her voice. She lived in Los Angeles when she was 16, studied art in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at 18, and finally speaking at 20, settled in New York.

Her sculptures fall into the decade of Pop Art’s period of multiples, cartoon and movie inspired paintings and prints, assemblages of disparate images and the immortalization of the ordinary and commercial. This was the 60’s of Andy Warhol, George Segal, and Camelot. 

Marisol’s sculptures are funny, poignant, frightening, enlightening, satirical, thought provoking, mysterious and with a disturbing humor.

Many of her works are “family” themes. Do you recognize anyone?

“Women and Dog”, 1964, is made of wood, plaster, synthetic polymer paint, and mixed media, actual fabrics, a real purse, and a taxidermied head of a dog. It is life-size, 72x82x16.

Unlike Goya’s painting, Marisol’s “family” is not a commission. She has portrayed a family as she choses. This sculpture could be considered “theater”, tableaux, and also a satire of aliens.

However, there are some hardcore personalities here, made stronger by the hard surfaces.

What is disturbing to you?

Frozen? Humorous?

The spinning heads? the small black and white self-portrait of Marisol? And who is the darker race child, contained in a square box/body, as is the dog?

In art terms, this is an assemblage or a construction.

Although not surreal, and with logical proportions, the figures are disturbingly monumental. The tableaux is mental, emotional, psychological, and yet historically accurate. Remember “kelly green” and “hot pink”?

Are you smiling?

Do you see yourself, or someone that you know or remember?

(And it is agreed that in today’s world, the eve of 2020, a taxidermied head of a dog is not kosher!)