Saying goodbye to Goya
January 8 2016
Video: Arts Alliance/You Tube
There's a nice piece in The Guardian on the soon to finish Goya exhibition at the National Gallery in London, and how the show's curator - Xavier Bray - will face up to seeing the end of a decade-long project:
Xavier Bray is planning a private farewell for a collection of portraits he spent more than 10 years bringing together, before they are scattered and returned to their owners.
“I’m hoping I’ll get permission from the director to have a few hours on my own when the show closes,” he says of Goya: the Portraits, which ends at 6pm on Sunday. “It’s going to be quite important to say goodbye.”
Bray may even share a few private words with the painter’s spirit. “I’ll probably have a quick conversation with Goya up there and we’ll hopefully shake hands and thank each other, and walk off, and that will be it.”
For all you Goya enthusiasts, there will be a film out soon based on the exhibition, which opens in cinemas in February (curious timing perhaps). A trailer is above.
I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition, and indeed even managed to revise my view of Goya. In the room which displayed portraits of his friends and fellow artists, I saw some of the best portraits I've ever seen. Other works, however, were so curiously variable you wondered how he got away with it. Doubtless, curmudgeons like me will say the same in centuries to come about some of the artistic megastars of today.
I've been meaning to link to Neil Jeffares excellent review of the Goya show, here.
