Evaluating Works of Arts

Evaluations of works of art focus on form, color, texture, design, balance,

image, or theme. Even the phrase “appreciating a work of art” suggests that we are
making a value judgment, though usually not one based on money. Through
evaluation, writers teach us to appreciate all kinds of art: paintings, sculpture,
photographs, buildings, antique cars or furniture, novels, short stories, essays,
poems, and tapestries.
In the following selection, art critic Mark Stevens evaluates Fransisco
Goya’s paintings “Tre Maggio”. This painting depicts the execution of Spanish
hostages by Napoleon’s forces, in retaliation for an attack by the mob on the
previous day. As Stevens explains, Goya does not portray the doomed hostages as
heroic martyrs; instead, he tries to show the horrors of war and death. In doing that,
Stevens believes, Goya “told the truth: what happened on the third of May was a
butchering”

The iconography, the color and light, the composition – all contribute to the power of this
picture. Its most impressive aspect, in my view, is that Goya … transformed the conventions of
hope into those of despair. This makes the horror all the greater, for we can see what we have
lost, in addition to what we have. In the background, for example, the spire of the church is a
dark, dim reminder, certainly not a cause for hope. The cruelty of the execution, which takes
place in a melodramatic light, reminds us of acts of martyrdom – but without the traditional
promise of heavenly reward.
Of course, the outstretched arms of the central figure also recall the Crusifixion, and the
man’s hands bear stigmata. However, the traditional religious gesture of acceptance – the
outstretched arms of Christ – has here been turned into an expression of outrage, terror and
meaninglessness. What is the victim saying? There is nothing he can say, for his situation is one
in which neither faith nor reason matter. His outflung arms are mirrored by those of the corpse in
the foreground: such is the promise of resurrection. The corpse itself is perhaps the most truthful
ever painted, for it exhibits the unbearable banality, the crumpled emptiness of death.
The men around the central victim display a variety of other reactions to their fate, none
noble. One looks heavenward, but his expression is groveling. The praying man cannot raise his
eyes. A third hides his face, as do the victims who await execution. Goya’s use of light enhances
their horror. The light contains no spiritual overtone, but rather emanates from a common
lantern; an intense glow is cast on the small, grisly scene, but it cannot pierce the dark reaches.
This light – glaring, without delicacy, lurid, almost artificial – seems peculiarly modern ….
In addition to his brilliant use of light and shade, which isolates the central figure, Goya
used several other formal devices to make his point. He employed sweeping diagonal lines to
scissor the picture into sharp, claustrophobic spaces. He foreshortened the corpse, so that the
body seems to draw toward the viewer. (It almost looks as though the dead man is bidding the
viewer welcome). Otherwise, Goya has positioned the figures so that the viewer, curiously, is
placed on the side of the executioners. You and I, observing, are implicated in mankind’s folly.