The Art of Spain

BBC4 one of Auntie's digital channels has, over the past three weeks, been showing Andrew Graham-Dixon's "Art of Spain".
G-D managed to visit a good number of the UNESCO world heritage sites in Spain., and it's pretty hard not to point a camera at El  Escorial, the Alhambra or the Mezquita   and manage to make a pig's ear out of the scene.
It's  difficult not to make the later  works of  Goya interesting. Commentary on "Los Desastres de la Guerra", is  almost unnecessary.

 

Plate 36

Spanish:Tampoco.

English: Not (in this case) either.

And G-D did a competent job with Velázquez, Picasso, and Miro.

Diego Valazquez-Las Meninas

The  last programme dealt  with  the Catalan  architect, Antoni Gaudi. But no, no, no,  Graham, the Sagrada Familia

Is NOT A CATHEDRAL.

Comments

[Peter Harvey]

With obvious and important exceptions on both sides Britain has tended to produce authors, while Spanish culture has tended to the visual arts. Maybe the climate is responsible.

Goya is an interesting case. He was one of the ilustrados, who supported the progressive ideals of the French Revolution but was appalled by the reality of what happened after the occupation (he lived in Madrid all through it) and moreover by the repression that followed the restoration of the conservative Fernando VII (Britain's objective in the Peninsular War, along with encouraging bits of Spain to secede) and the consequent failure to implement the liberal Constitution of 1812.

That conflict between 'the two Spains' was not to be settled until 1978. Some say that it still exists.