Old Man Goya [Anglais] [Relié]

Julia Blackburn has already established herself as one of the finest writers of non-fiction, but with Old Man Goya she takes her ability to re-create the past to a new level in her haunting evocation of the final years of the great Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya. Partly inspired by the painful loss her own mother (who was also a painter), Blackburn's desire to write about Goya developed when she learnt that in 1792, at the age of 47, the painter went permanently deaf; "I wanted to know what sort of world this deaf man had inhabited and how he had managed to live with the isolation of deafness and how it had changed the way he used his remaining senses". The result is a remarkably perceptive voyage into Goya's mind, which hovers between history and fiction, as Blackburn moves between the death of her own mother, visits to Goya's old haunts in Spain and France, and the painter's own remarkable lust for life in the midst of domestic upheavals and the horrors of warfare in early 19th-century Spain.

Old Man Goya moves from Goya's early days as a rich court painter, creating "dozens of designs of light-hearted subjects", to the trauma of deafness, the devastation of the bloody Peninsula War that swept Iberia between 1807 and 1812, the death of his first wife and old age with a mistress half his age. Interspersed amongst the text are 23 beautiful Goya copperplates through which Blackburn "can see Goya, a silent witness who makes no comment, but gives a shape to everything he sees", whose relish for the absurd, the cruel and the carnivalesque remained with him throughout his long life. Blackburn's elegant prose and unerring eye for domestic and artistic detail creates a wonderfully compassionate portrait of Goya, and she happily concedes to being "caught up in the spinning energy of the man as he hurtled relentlessly through the years", a journey that her readers will find well worth pursuing. --Jerry Brotton --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

A portraitist for the Spanish aristocracy before being struck deaf after an illness in 1792, Goya (1746-1828) subsequently developed a bolder, rougher style of religious fresco, sided with the French after they invaded, was pardoned by the Spanish king in 1814, and lived a more and more reclusive life, finally going into exile in Bordeaux in his final four years. In a conceit familiar from her previous titles (including The Emperor's Last Island, where British writer Blackburn juxtaposed a chronicle of Napoleon on St. Helena with her own life and travels), this book is as much about Blackburn's life as it is the second half of Goya's. Blackburn free associates, for example, from memories of her mother's paint studio to episodes from the life of Goya, finding parallel grotesques in each world. She interlards her narrative of Goya's life with her own tourist trips tracking his movements through Spain and France to the point where it can be difficult to tell the sets of experiences apart. The faux naIve tone that dominates the book seems to be an attempt to imitate the art writer John Berger's famed "peasant" style, with vastly inferior results: "Goya the deaf man makes me think of a toad.... But before he was deaf he was able to hear and before he was old he was young." For those serious about Goya's life and work, this book obscures more than it reveals.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

The author of both fiction and nonfiction, Blackburn (e.g., Daisy Bates in the Desert) has returned with a m‚lange of biography, historical fiction, and meditation on the life of Spanish painter Francisco de Goya. Although many academic works on Goya are available, Blackburn's reluctance to conform to any one genre makes this book on the painter's last 35 years unique. Blackburn's meticulous research into Goya's life, the cast of characters around him, and the impact of his hearing loss allowed her to re-create the most intimate moments. For example, in her description of Goya's relationship with the Duchess of Alba, Blackburn imagines the newly deaf Goya being seduced by one of the legendary subjects of his portraits. Goya purists may be uncomfortable when Blackburn goes off on tangents, as when she revels in meticulous descriptions of late 18th- and early 19th-century Spain or draws parallels between the death of her mother, a painter, and Goya's own demise. But in the end, Blackburn's subjective take on Goya the man works beautifully. She successfully creates a virtual tour through Spain's past and present and fills in the gaps about Goya's personal life with details one won't get from the audio tour at the Prado museum. Highly recommended. Adriana Lopez, "Criticas.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Blackburn, a writer known for her impressionistic, in-the-frame approach to biography (Napoleon is among her subjects), focuses on the second half of Goya's long and amazingly productive life, beginning with the devastating illness that left him deaf at age 47. Kinetic description is her forte, and Blackburn not only empathetically imagines the sea change caused by Goya's abrupt sensory loss, and convincingly assesses its impact on his work, she also conjures up the artist's mise-en-scene, from the frenetic streets of Madrid to the sanctuary of the studio, the bizarreness of the court of Charles IV, the horrors of famine and war, Goya's long marriage, and, after his wife's death, late-life relationship with a much younger woman. So immersed is Blackburn in Goya's psyche and oeuvre, she channels the drama of his extraordinary, psychologically complex work, especially in her tactile descriptions of his adept printmaking, a concentration that inspired her to reproduce photographs of his etching plates, suitably intimate images for her vital, inventively participatory portrait of a master portraitist and observer of life. Donna Seaman
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?Extraordinary . . . Throughout, the writer?s evocations of Goya?s work are not just intensely visual but virtually audible . . . Blackburn writes to startling effect.? ?The New York Times

?[Blackburn?s] real talent is in conjuring up lives . . . You have the uncanny sensation that you have met Goya, felt his honest horny hands, watched him work.? ?The Economist

?[Blackburn?s] rare imagination and profound intelligence . . . carry her into the mind and the work of Francisco de Goya . . . Each image, exquisite in its plainness, draws us first into the landscape, then into the past, a process Blackburn repeats until we are mesmerized.? ?The Boston Globe

?[A] singular, empathetic homage?.Blackburn's attempt to see with Goya's eyes?is most successful and moving. . . .She writes like a painter of still lives.? ?The Observer (London)

?Blackburn?s prose is elegant and precise, illuminated by intelligence, curiosity, and a refined visual sense . . . [She] beautifully conveys the changed reality of the newly deaf painter.? ?Literary Review



From the Trade Paperback edition.

In 1792, when he was forty-seven, the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya contracted a serious illness that left him stone deaf. In this extraordinary book, Julia Blackburn follows Goya through the remaining thirty-five years of his life. It was a time of political turmoil, of war, violence, and confusion, and Goya transformed what he saw around him into visionary paintings, drawings, and etchings. These were also years of tenderness for Goya, of intimate relationships with the Duchess of Alba and with Leocadia, his mistress, who accompanied him to the end.

Blackburn’s singular distinction as a biographer is her uncanny ability to create a kaleidoscope of biography, memoir, history, and meditation—to think herself into another world. In Goya she has found the perfect subject. Visiting the towns Goya frequented, reading the revelatory letters that he wrote for years to a boyhood friend, investigating the subjects he portrayed, Julia Blackburn writes about the elderly painter with the intimacy of an old friend, seeing through his eyes and sharing the silence in his head.

With unprecedented immediacy and illumination, Old Man Goya gives us an unparalleled portrait of the artist.

“Extraordinary . . . Throughout, the writer’s evocations of Goya’s work are not just intensely visual but virtually audible . . . Blackburn writes to startling effect.” —The New York Times

“[Blackburn’s] real talent is in conjuring up lives . . . You have the uncanny sensation that you have met Goya, felt his honest horny hands, watched him work.” —The Economist

“[Blackburn’s] rare imagination and profound intelligence . . . carry her into the mind and the work of Francisco de Goya . . . Each image, exquisite in its plainness, draws us first into the landscape, then into the past, a process Blackburn repeats until we are mesmerized.” —The Boston Globe

“[A] singular, empathetic homage….Blackburn's attempt to see with Goya's eyes…is most successful and moving. . . .She writes like a painter of still lives.” —The Observer (London)

“Blackburn’s prose is elegant and precise, illuminated by intelligence, curiosity, and a refined visual sense . . . [She] beautifully conveys the changed reality of the newly deaf painter.” —Literary Review



From the Trade Paperback edition.

Julia Blackburn is the author of three books of nonfiction, Charles Waterson, The Emperor’s Last Island, and Daisy Bates in the Desert, and of two novels, The Book of Color and The Leper’s Companions, both of which were shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She lives in England.