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msand3's review
5.0
This has to be the most Spanish book I've encountered. In these etchings Goya records all the frantic madness of late 18th-century bullfighting with an almost photographic sense of detail and movement. Through the artist’s eye, we are witness to banderillas brandishing firecrackers, bulls charging into men with manacled feet seated in chairs, dogs unleashed on bulls, donkeys used as buffers between enraged bulls, men being tossed into the air or trampled, bulls charging into the stands and killing spectators, and various other depictions of man and beast in any number of deadly entanglements. It’s amazing to see how many people and props are in the bullring at any given time: groups of people, animals, a horse-drawn carriage, crowds of people in a divided ring with two bullfights occurring simultaneously, tables and chairs, etc.
The four lithographs in the Bulls of Bordeaux series lack the energy of Goya’s earlier bullfighting etchings, but are worth seeing for the way in which he is able to include far more people into the bullring compared to his etchings. There seem to be almost as many people in the ring as in the stands!
The four lithographs in the Bulls of Bordeaux series lack the energy of Goya’s earlier bullfighting etchings, but are worth seeing for the way in which he is able to include far more people into the bullring compared to his etchings. There seem to be almost as many people in the ring as in the stands!
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