For my painting, I chose Fight with Cudgels by Spanish painter Francisco Goya. It was painted somewhere between 1820-1823.
Goya was born in Aragon on the 30th of March, 1746. At age 14, he studied painting in Madrid under Baroque artist José Luzán. Later, in 1786, he became a court painter; his early years were focused on portraits of Spanish aristocracy and tapestries made for the palace.
During 1793, a severe illness left Goya deaf. After this, his paintings took a darker turn, focused on bleak subject matter over the grandeur of his Baroque training. This, combined with the 1807 Peninsular War between Spain and France, inspired him to paint a series dubbed The Black Paintings. These were a collection of 14 images painted directly on the walls of his house. They depicted dark subject matter in a vague, Impressionist style. The paintings were never meant to leave his home, but were transferred to canvas in the 1870s and are now displayed in various Among them was Fight with Cudgels, which is now in the Museo Nacional de Madrid.
In 1828, Goya suffered a fatal stroke and died.
I was drawn to Fight with Cudgels because of the story behind it (in terms of Goya's stylistic development). I have always liked Goya for his ability to show movement and light. (Also, we share a birthday!) The Black Paintings contain some of my favorite paintings ever, and I find their unique style very compelling. I chose Fight with Cudgels in particular because it features the most distinct and defined shapes of any of the Black Paintings. It was the most easily transferable to 3D and could be made functional without changing it too much. Despite this, there are still some vague aspects (are the men standing in a river or grass?) that allowed me to add my own interpretations.
Portrait of Goya by Vicente López Portaña 1826
Fight with Cudgels by Francisco Goya 1820-1823
My initial plan was to create a diorama or a book nook, creating the same composition as the painting.
However, it ended up being difficult to create the right shape for that and I restarted. I decided to make it more functional and turn it into a lidded box. I chose to put the two figures on the lid and place the background elements like the mountains and clouds on the body of the box. I planned to build the box as a slab with darts, using a rectangular mold to maintain the shape From the same slab, I planned to cut a square lid and add two rectangles on the bottom to serve as a lip. Then, I was going to sculpt the figures separately, beginning with their bodies, then scoring on their heads and arms.
I then planned to score on the mountain shapes, carving out from the bottom to make sure they were hollow. I then did the same for the cloud shapes, making them rounder and less defined than the mountains.
Lastly, I was going to add color with underglaze, using large, painterly strokes to mimic Goya's impressionistic style. The faces in particular would be undetailed and messy, as Goya's figures do not have very distinct features.
While I am overall happy with the shape and look of my piece, there were many things that went wrong in the process of making it.
The figures themselves ended up being a bit fragile - I should have posed them a bit differently in order to support the weight of their clubs, since both of their arms ended up breaking off. They also may not have been blended well enough into the body after scoring and slipping, making that joint weak. Because I restarted already and the rest of the piece was bone dry by then, I did not have time to fix it. After the second firing, I may take air dry clay and mold new arms onto the figures in order to make it more accurate.
My biggest problem was not starting in time. I did not give myself enough time for the piece to go through two rounds of firing, especially after restarting and changing the entire structure of the piece. I should have started earlier in order to fully complete the piece.
Despite these issues, I am happy with the overall outcome. It matches what I planned and I think it reflects the original painting as well as it could given my timing problems.
