Spanish drawings at the Frick in New York (1st review)

A good friend of mine contends that draftsmanship— how an artist speaks to us with the merest stroke of pencil or pen on paper— is the true measure of how "real" an artist is. Color and shadows allow for plenty of fakery, but a drawing is unforgiving. This perception was confirmed for me anew by the Frick's current exhibition of drawings by Spanish masters.

Goya takes pride of place here, with more than 20 works on paper. Of course anyone who knows Goya's four great portfolios of etchings won't be surprised by what we see here, but if you only know Goya as a painter— even as the painter of those fearsome "Black Paintings"— these works will be real eye-openers.

Mirth, which serves as one of the show's marquee drawings, is a wonderful study of two old people in the middle of a wild dance. It's at once funny and sad, but always mirthful— very, very mirthful.

Meanwhile, seemingly on another planet, He Appeared Like This, Mutilated, in Zaragoza, Early in 1700 is a work as stark as its title— real reportage in images rather than words, and a preview of the heights that Goya would reach in his "Disasters of War" series. A Fight is yet another piece of visual reportage, as two women fight over a man who reclines, observing their struggle with amused detachment.

Gallantry or rape?

Sly humor is the coin of What a Disaster! which can be about either a dog who has been unable to do its duty, or a young whore who hasn't yet landed a customer. Similarly, Peasant Carrying a Woman can be seen either as the depiction of an act or gallantry, or a rape in progress.

There are no such questions regarding the meaning of Torture of a Man, in which Goya depicts a prisoner undergoing the ordeal of the strappado. The man kicking in mid-air seems almost graceful, except that he's kicking in pain, not mirth.

Three Men Digging is a wonderful piece of draftsmanship and, as the Frick owns the oil that Goya did from the drawing, you can compare the relative merits of each for yourself. To my eyes, the drawing is by far the more dynamic work, although the painting is undeniably atmospheric.

Ribera's surreal humor

But Goya isn't the whole story here. The show's other star is Jusepe de Ribera, who is represented by eight pieces. Before this show, I'd known Ribera only for his paintings, most of which left me cold. The drawings, by contrast, reveal a streak of surreal humor in works like Male Figure Wearing Toga with Little Man Sitting on his Head. (That's the title--I'm not making it up--and that's exactly what the drawing depicts.)

Head of a Satyr and Bat and Two Ears are tour de force examples of Ribera's way with a line. But David and Goliath was the piece that knocked me out. The Biblical giant Goliath lies sprawled on his stomach, a large stone clearly imbedded in his forehead— that part could almost be cruelly comic— but the young shepherd boy David sits astride his back, and clutching Goliath's huge sword in both hands like a cheese-wire, he calmly saws through the still-living Goliath's neck! All that's needed are flying gouts of blood.

Vanderbilt's surprise

A minor surprise in the show is Juan Carreno de Miranda's Study for the Assumption of a Virgin, which is less a finished image than a study page of motifs. In one section Carreno superimposes a study of the same head, turned to the right and to the left, to an oddly disquieting effect. Interestingly this odd piece, now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was apparently the earliest Spanish drawing to find a home in a New York City collection: It was once owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt, who I would have thought had more conservative tastes.♦


To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.