Customer Reviews

Old Man Goya

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This is a superficial and self-indulgent approach to both the subject (Goya), his art, Spain and Spanish history. Full of factual errors, it also is full of non-sequiturs, vague statements and strangely unconnected self-reflections. A huge disappointment.

If you want dry history and biography, go elsewhere. Blackburn's talent is in immersing herself in a very personal and empathetic way in the world of Goya. I started Blackburn's The Book of Colour years ago, but dropped it quickly - her style annoyed me then but now I see that she hadn't yet found her stride, was bravely experimenting and failing.
More and more, I hear people saying that they are finding their "portal" to history through this innovative post-modern kind of biographical historical melange. Anyone who calls this work self-indulgent misses the point. Anyone who doubts Blackburn's intelligence and skill as a writer in pulling this together is deluded. I am astonished by how vividly she conjured the world that she imagined Goya saw, without relying on turgid passages of description. Love the impressionistic style. Feel that the reviewer who said she's a poor John Berger imitation was being a bit harsh. Let her have her idiosyncratic and at times brilliant style. There's enough potted history about without Blackburn adding to the canon.

Though this work is not written by an art historian it is written with a fond appreciation for art and the artist. I was skeptical and didn't expect to find it so interesting. After reading many dry and boring works on artists, where so called facts are really just history (lies put to written account)-this work is what understanding art is all about. Her visits to the places Goya lived in shed light to his possible personality as one who experiences his work may do also. She uses her experience as a human being with a dying mother who is also an artist to contrast with discovering Goya through her travels. Without the clutter of dates and art historian jargon, we get to experience a human being and the connection between art and life. Goya appears as a human being, with hopes, desires and short-comings and not as some machine who produced art exactly when and where. I enjoyed her attempt at understanding the deaf and what it is really life to live in silence like Goya did. I think this book will help people appreciate Goya's work and the people he loved as well.

Half the book is about the author, not the artist Goya, and her juvenile fantasies of how Goya lived. In between this there is a smidgen of information on Goya, but I'll probably learn more taking out the movie on him. Did anyone read this before it was published?

This is supposed to be part biography, part personal recollection. Part fiction, part non-fiction. In prose but poetic. However Blackburn does not pull any of this off. The book provides some fluffy overly-poetic imagery of Goya (some of which IS memorable) but not much more. It reads quite self-indulgently too. The part biography part personal story might have worked in principle given the right style - in practice it hasn't.

Might have made a good poem but it's not a good book.