In 2012, the family of the late Arthur Ross donated a 1,200-piece collection of European prints to Yale University Art Gallery. An exhibit of 200 of the pieces was recently installed across two floors of the New Haven art space. The selection is eclectic: impossible constructions by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, satirical pieces by Honore Daumier, bullfighting aquatints by Picasso, illustrations of “Hamlet” by Eugene Delacroix and of “The Raven” by Edouard Manet, portraits by Corot, Pissarro, Matisse and Renoir, and images of Italy by Mortimer Menpes and Canaletto.
All are masterful. But the unforgettable heart of the show consists of 18 “Los disparates” pieces by Francisco Goya. No art historian ever has discovered what Goya was on about with his “disparates.”
“These are very mysterious subjects. There is loads of Goya scholarship, but to this day no one seems to have figured out what they are,” said Suzanne Boorsch, the museum’s Robert L. Solley curator of prints and drawings.
The aquatint and etching series is marked by recurring images of peasants clustered together in fear of foes that can be human, supernatural or unseen; violent confrontations between humans or against humans by animals; an indefinable sense of dread; and an indeterminate sense of place. An angel of death sends soldiers running. Shabby people huddle on a tree branch, looking down at whatever it is that frightens them. A woman is accosted by a giant while two ghostly heads scream in terror. Malevolent spirits hover over a field of death. Corpse-like figures stand in a spooky row. In one image the darkened sky is full of winged men. What are they fleeing from?
Goya began creating the “disparates” after a bloody war and didn’t publish any of them during his lifetime. He left Spain forever shortly after they were created.
“There could be an overall explanation,” Boorsch said. “It was a terrible time and he was expressing a general feeling of anxiety, like today, when so many of us feel, what is the world coming to?”
“MEANT TO BE SHARED: SELECTIONS FROM THE ARTHUR ROSS COLLECTION OF EUROPEAN PRINTS” will be at Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., at York Street, in New Haven, until April 24. artgallery.yale.edu.
