‘Disasters of War’
The Recurring Darkness of War in Nineteenth-Century Etchings by Goya… and Our Daily News
The Disasters of War is a series of 82 prints created between 1810 and 1820 by the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya (1746–1828). Although we do not know for certain what Goya’s intention was behind these prints, art historians generally view them as a visual protest against the violent conflicts between Spain and Napoleon’s occupying French forces in early nineteenth-century Spain, including the Peninsular War of 1808–1814).
Today, the print series is seen as one of the most significant anti-war works of art. Goya does not shy away from depicting the atrocities inflicted on Spanish civilians, from killings and rape, to the ‘quieter’ horrors of starvation. The stark black and white prints, with their violently etched lines, starts to capture the despair, isolation, and desperation of human beings trying to survive in the face of merciless violence. It is on these depictions of civilians that I would like to focus today.
In this print, Plate 59 (What good is a cup?), two starving women lie on the ground, while another woman kneels down to offer the weakest woman a cup of something to drink. When we look more closely, we come to see the small, lifeless body of a child on the dying woman’s lap. Although our eyes are drawn towards the huddled group of figures, Goya surrounds them with a dark, speckled surrounding. As viewers, apart from a dark line of shadow marking out the floor, we have no idea where these people find themselves — they are alone, abandoned, and untethered from any kind of graspable reality.
We see a similar technique used in Plates 60 (There is no one to help them) and 62 (The beds of death). Although the background textures in Plate 60 are more varied, the effect remains just as disorienting and ominous. At first, I thought about the rhetorical use of ‘light’ and ‘dark’ we still hear used today in media representations of conflicts — most commonly, the idea that the ‘good’ side is light fighting against dark ‘bad’ side.
But when looking at these particular prints by Goya, I am actually struck by the terror of literal darkness. I think of the recent weekend of 30th October when Israeli forces cut off electricity and almost all communication services in Gaza — plunging 2 million Palestinians into total darkness. Ayman Eddama, a secondary school teacher in northern Gaza, described the 30 hour power cut as: “like hell, like doomsday… We were terrified of the amount of killings they [Israeli forces] would be able to do.”
I try, but I am unable to imagine the piercing fear of being bombed in total darkness, without any contact with the outside world — with the only light coming from explosions and flames. Here, I turn to Goya’s print They escape among the flames (Plate 41), where civilians are desperately fleeing from the violent light of an explosion. We can almost feel the violence in Goya’s hand as he etched into the plate — jagged, vertical lines shoot out from its centre. Although certain bodies are illuminated by the explosion — most centrally the luminous body of an unconscious or dead woman carried by two men, and another woman lunging towards the right of the scene — the shadowy details contain even more horrors. We see screaming faces and outstretched hands, a man carrying an older person on his back, bodies falling over each other to escape. Look closer— can you see the two small feet silhouetted against the flames? The charred body lying face down?
Although these prints are (of course) products of a specific historical moment, there is a tragic immediacy in these images of suffering. I wish these prints only told us about the past — instead, they tell us too much about the present. I cannot look at them without immediately thinking of how much they share in common with photographs coming out of Palestine today.
Here, I want to remember the words of Rachel Carson: “Until we have the courage to recognise cruelty for what it is — whether the victim is human or animal — we cannot expect to be much better in this world”. With The Disasters of War, Goya recognises cruelty, and bears witness — in his own way as an artist — to the human loss, suffering and devastation caused by war. Over two hundred years later, we too can recognise cruelty for what it is. We must speak out against the atrocities now happening in Gaza and, by extension, against hate in all of its forms.
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All images from the ‘Disasters of War’ series reproduced in this article are in the Public Domain [view sources]
