Past
Artist's Statement
Press Release
The Disasters of Peace
By Larry Gaudet
This attempt at a memoir is divided into 80 short episodes, each inspired by one of the 80 copperplate etchings in The Disasters of War series by the great Spanish artist Francisco Goya. A few episodes were edited to disguise the individuals portrayed and to protect the innocent. A few others are not strictly memoir anecdotes but ruminations of a kind that flowered as I scavenged my past for material. Like all memoirs, mine is a story of fragmentary revelations, a selective rendering or manipulation of elements that, in reasonably good faith, I have brought forward under the banner of truth. Why I’ve relied on Goya for the blueprint to construct a personal narrative is a question for the text to answer. It has something to do with the moral awareness – the brute honesty – so poignantly alive in his work. Goya, after proving himself as a court painter in service to kings and queens, acted on an instinct for speaking truth to power, although he was usually careful – or discrete – in how he did it. There’s nothing careful or discrete about The Disasters of War, which may be one reason Goya elected not to publish this series in his lifetime. Although my own work here was produced to live on its own, without a visual companion, I’ve come to appreciate that the better part of my intention comes alive in the epic shelter of Goya’s achievement.
By Larry Gaudet
This attempt at a memoir is divided into 80 short episodes, each inspired by one of the 80 copperplate etchings in The Disasters of War series by the great Spanish artist Francisco Goya. A few episodes were edited to disguise the individuals portrayed and to protect the innocent. A few others are not strictly memoir anecdotes but ruminations of a kind that flowered as I scavenged my past for material. Like all memoirs, mine is a story of fragmentary revelations, a selective rendering or manipulation of elements that, in reasonably good faith, I have brought forward under the banner of truth. Why I’ve relied on Goya for the blueprint to construct a personal narrative is a question for the text to answer. It has something to do with the moral awareness – the brute honesty – so poignantly alive in his work. Goya, after proving himself as a court painter in service to kings and queens, acted on an instinct for speaking truth to power, although he was usually careful – or discrete – in how he did it. There’s nothing careful or discrete about The Disasters of War, which may be one reason Goya elected not to publish this series in his lifetime. Although my own work here was produced to live on its own, without a visual companion, I’ve come to appreciate that the better part of my intention comes alive in the epic shelter of Goya’s achievement.