Unlicked Envelope: Goza de Goya

For those of you who only know Goya as a brand of instant rice products

I must say, you are missing out. Today, I visited the Goya exhibit at CaixaForum, a “social work” venture of the large La Caixa bank here in Spain.

In a huge building, CaixaForum houses multiple exhibits that change throughout the year and are completely free to the public. In honor the tenth anniversary of CaixaForum, La Caixa collaborated with El Prado to bring over 100 works of the 18^th century artist Francisco Goya to the people of Barcelona. Goya, who is best known for his realism, choice of “ordinary people” as his subjects, and his social critiques through art, was born in Aragon and produced a huge volume of work. This exhibition, called Goya: Lights and Shadows, highlights both his paintings and the innumerable sketches and lithographs that he produced throughout his lifetime. While some of his works are easily recognizable and famous, such as El Sueno de la Razon Produce Monstrous (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters)

Others were far darker than I expected and are definitely not shown in schools to impressionable youth. The breadth of the work in the exhibit was vast, but followed a general trend that his large paintings were full of careful use of light and wonderful color, while his drawings were dark and showed a large amount of turmoil and discontent. Apparently, he grew more introspective and dissatisfied after he became deaf, an event that caused him to think deeply about social injustice and the general state of society. (See: May Third, which was not part of this exhibit)

Some highlights from the exhibit:

The Injured Builder

Proving how sexy it can be to keep your clothes on. That said, Goya produced a naked woman painting around the same time and got in some serious trouble with the church for such indecency.

Interestingly, this is a critique of prostitution. Apparently the Spanish phrase "sentar la cabeza," or "sit on your head" means to ponder or think deeply about. These girls are shown to not have wisdom, and the leering figures in the back (referred to as the "grotesque") are supposed to clue you in that they are prostitutes. In fact, Goya seems to have drawn a lot of pieces critiquing prostitutes.

As his work progressed, Goya became critical of the education system, war, bullfighting, and then many of his classical artistic forms as he tried to find new means of expression. I like that he was never satisfied with what he knew and wanted to be a lifelong learner. One of the last pieces in the exhibit, which Goya capitoned "Aun Aprendo" (Even I Learn or Even Now I Learn) shows an old man, suggesting that he must give in to a withering body though his passion and mind live on.

And now the obligatory Foodie Section. This afternoon, I had the chance to stop by the Chocolate Museum, an essential stop in a city that is as sweet-toothed as it is fascinating. I signed up for a chocolate appreciation class, because I take my education very seriously. Upon my arrival, I signed in and was presented with a ticket to the museum for after the class... I should mention that the ticket to the chocolate museum is a chocolate bar with a ticket number printed on the upper corner.

Our class of about 13 people (several Spanish couples of varying ages, one couple from Texas on a vacation to Spain, a bachelorette party where everyone was dressed as fish and a mother-like figure had a plastic fishing rod with a squeaky wind-up reel, and me) was led to a large classroom with stadium seating and, at the front, a large shiny counter. At each place was a plate with five little chocolates and a bottle of water (for cleansing the palate, but only before or after the experience so as not to “interrupt the priming of our senses”).

After a bit of history of chocolate and some show and tell pieces (we held the solid and fat parts of chocolate, used to produce dark/milk and white chocolates, respectively), we began our sensory journey. With each piece of chocolate, we had to unwrap it, examine its color, breathe in its scent, crack it next to our ear to feel the firmness and hear the sound, and then taste the broken piece (no chewing allowed!), rolling it around in our mouths “like a caramel”. Based on the color and how easy it was to break, we guessed what the percentage of cacao was; based on the taste and scent, we guessed what was added in or what plantation was next to the cacao forest. For three of the five, we also drank a hot version of the chocolate melted in milk, which often made the flavors stronger. It was pretty incredible how keen the tastebuds of my classmates were; they guessed everything correctly. Vanilla and caramel mixed into the first one (I almost died when the frothy drinkable version was passed around, and got a huge cup of the leftovers at the end), next to a coffee plantation for the second, next to a citrus plantation for the fourth… it was interesting because I’d get little jolts of flavor but it was hard to identify them. When you take the time to really TASTE chocolate and realize that it has layers and waves of flavor, it’s pretty cool. It turns out that there are over 30 types of cacao fruit, but only 3 that are commonly used. Each one has a region of the world (Africa, Central/South America, or Sri Lanka) and a characteristic taste (bitter, sweet, and “equilibrium”, respectively). And you could actually taste that; it’s not just some foodie mumbojumbo. By the end of the class, we were all buzzed on sugar and caffeine. I packed up the remainder of my samples for when my sweet tooth strikes again, but most people left theirs. Some people just can’t withstand the academic pressure, I guess.