I used to think there were two artists called Goya. My teenage, art-class-free brain assumed that the painter who practically licked the Naked Maja off the canvas and the man who produced the nightmarish Saturn Eating His Children were obviously different people.

In Goya, Robert Hughes explains why this assumption was so natural.  And he does it beautifully. When it comes to popular art criticism, the only thing better than snarky Robert Hughes is enthusiastic Robert Hughes. He’s enthusiastic about Goya, and the results are wonderful.  

Hughes has two traits that make him the best popular art critic in circulation. First, he’s great at exploring technical aspects of artistic composition and aesthetic balance in a way that’s accessible to the inartistic reader. This lets him tell the reader how a Goya composition is beautiful, instead of simply telling us the self-evident truth that it is.  

It allows the reader to better understand what was demanded of Goya, for example, in terms of the production of his etchings. In clear language, Hughes sketches out the process in a few paragraphs. Not enough information for a novice to go out and attempt it herself, certainly, but enough to understand another dimension of Goya’s genius in creating the emotion and tension of the Los Caprichos or Los Desastres de la Guerra. 

Hughes’ second great talent is his smooth, assured provision of historical context for his subjects, be they paintings or painters. This is important in the case of Goya. The Spain of his era tends to show up one dimensionally (if at all) in North American history curricula: the ‘birthplace’ of guerilla war, and one of the candidates for the place where Napoleon started losing.   

Obviously this is an insufficient context in which to look at the life of a painter who was active over six decades. And having such a long-lived, active subject, Hughes doesn’t have much room to introduce us more intimately to Goya’s Spain. Yet he manages very well.