Francisco Goya, William Hogarth, and other legendary European artists, infamous for lambasting political figures and challenging the status quo, are all featured in a student-curated exhibition currently at the University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.
The exhibition “Contemplation & Confrontation: The Satirical Print in Europe, 1750-1850” is on display until Dec. 27 and includes several prints from various satirists throughout Europe, including France, England and Spain.
“All of these artists really focus on the attitudes of the bourgeoisie and authoritative figures in the government,” said Chyna Bounds, a graduate student of art history and graduate teaching fellow in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture.
Bounds organized the exhibition with guidance from JSMA curators June Black and Johanna G. Seasonwein. On Nov. 6, Bounds will lead a curator’s talk about the exhibition and the artists’ provocative work at noon at the museum (1430 Johnson Lane).
Spanish artist Francisco Goya’s prints all touch on the corruption within the Catholic Church, including: “Que viene el coco (Here Comes the Bogeyman)”; “El Vergonzoso (The Shamefaced One)”; and “¿No hay quien nos desate? (Is There No One to Untie Us?).”
“The Stage of Cruelty” series from William Hogarth is also on display in this exhibition. Hogarth created the visceral sequence of prints as he was greatly disturbed by the wickedness and barbarity he witnessed regularly in London. The prints depict a fictional character Tom Nero as the embodiment of an upper-class male in London.
Each print shows Nero involved in some form of vice – inflicting cruelty upon animals and humans alike, partaking in robbery and murder – until he reaches own undoing at his execution at the gallows.
Hogarth printed the series on cheap paper rather than woodcuts, which allowed for greater detail in the complicated scenes that unfold, as well as made them inexpensive for mass production.
This printmaking method was popular among artists in the 18th and 19th centuries, as these prints (and the countercultural ideas that challenged the predominant ethos of the church and government) were inexpensive to create and easy to distribute to poorer populations.
“The artists wanted them to be available to others who shared the same disdain toward the upper class,” said Bounds. “These themes would have resonated with the lower classes.”
In his 1791 etching “Wierd [sic] Sister, Ministers of Darkness, Minions of the Moon,” British satirist James Gillray portrayed the Secretary of State Henry Dundas, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, and Lord Chancellor Edward Thurlow, all clearly modeled after the witches of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The three politicians are gazing upon a moon with the profiles of Queen Charlotte and King George III.
“These artists criticized the government or royalty … and that type of satire is prevalent in contemporary works that criticize presidential candidates and foreign leaders [today],” said Bounds, a JSMA intern.
Bounds studied the works available in the museum’s collections to curate this exhibit.
“With ‘Contemplation & Confrontation,’ we gave [Chyna] the opportunity to curate an exhibition from start to finish,” said Black. “I spent several days with her in our collections storage areas, showing her a broad selection of works that related to her interests. From there, she came up with a more concrete theme and I worked with her to select a final group of works.”