This painting is part of Francisco Jose De Goya’s series Los Caprichos. Goya was a Spanish artist in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. His paintings inspired many artists in the 1900’s to draw about themes that were difficult to the public. Back in those days, people were extremely conservative and they wouldn’t dare to criticize the government or religion. Many of Goya’s paintings included themes like war and ethical corruption. I read about Goya in my Spanish literature class last year and I learned to admire him because I think it takes courage to question people’s ethics. It is even harder to imply new ethical beliefs. Goya is important to our class because ethics is one of the major topics that we’ve covered. However, I think that it is easier now to express our ethics and try to encourage others to think like us than it was before. This is simply because we now have freedom of speech and people are more liberal, especially here in Austin. 
The painting’s title is, El Sueño de la razón produce monstruos. Translated in English this means, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. This painting was meant to be the opening to his collection Los Caprichos, but it was hidden because of the criticisms that it made of society and politics. This exhibition includes both reality and fantasy, which in my opinion make it magical. I learned that the painting demonstrates the cruelty of human beings. It is said that there are three categories which are: “the absurd and ridiculous, images of trauma, and the mutability of body and spirit.” The mutability of the body and spirit can also be compared to this class because we’ve been reborn and we’ve all slowly turned into better human beings. We’ve learned how to be leaders and how to be ethical.
There are also different kinds of animals in the self portrait. The painting includes owls, bats, a cat, and lynx. All these animals are referred to as daemons and monsters on the video below. The bats definitely add fantasy to the painting because of the myth that bats are vampires; the owl is always used in scary movies to represent something bad. I think that these animals represent society and politics and he is attempted to express how both society and politics trouble him. I thought that the image of the owl giving Goya the paintbrush was interesting because I saw it as a way that animals want somebody to speak to them whether they are beautiful animals or not. If animals were and still are being used to represent human beings, what does this tell us? It tells us that animals and humans are very similar to each other and that we can relate. 
People keep translating this into "the sleep of reason..." but in Spanish the word "sueño" means both "sleep" and "dream" and I think Goya meant
ReplyDelete"The dream of reason produces monsters" because that makes much more sense.