- Museum number
- 2012,7077.1
- Title
- Object: Return to Goya, no.9
- Description
-
Return to Goya, no.9; a modification after plate 72 of Goya's Los Caprichos, 1796-97 where Chagoya's version replaces the woman's face with that of President Obama; printed in red letterpress below the etching is a small circular image of a fleeing Klu Klux Klan figure carrying a cross with flames behind. 2010
Etching and aquatint with letterpress on paper
- Production date
- 2010
- Dimensions
-
Height: 220 millimetres (image to plate mark)
-
Height: 370 millimetres (sheet)
-
Width: 150 millimetres
-
Width: 280 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- The print was produced as a benefit edition for the International Print Center New York, a non-profit organization for the appreciation and understanding of the fine art print. It is a sequel to a series of eight etchings inspired by Goya's 'Los Caprichos' published by Segura Publishing Co. in 1999. The print was published by Universal Limited Art Editions, Bay Shore, New York in an edition of 50 plus 10 artist's proofs and 4 printer's proofs.
Text from Coppel, Daunt and Tallman, 'The American Dream: pop to the present', London: Thames and Hudson in association with the British Museum, 2017, cat. no. 188:
During his career Chagoya has frequently returned to Goya, whose etchings he first encountered in 1983 as a student in a class given by Robert Flynn Johnson, curator of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts in San Francisco. Taking the artistic hero implanted within his name as his cue, he has since then made some forty etchings faithfully reproduced after Goya, often inserting different political personalities of the day, from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama. Whereas his first Goya etching of 1983, 'Contra el bien general' ('Against the common good'), substituted Goya’s head of a fiend with that of Reagan, in this etching Obama’s benignly smiling face takes the place of an attractive young woman – an indication of Chagoya’s political allegiance. Goya’s title ‘No te escaparás’ ('You will not escape') from plate 72 of his 'Los Caprichos' ('The Caprices') implies, however, that the engulfing forces of reaction, personified by the pursuing demons, threaten to frustrate the promise of political and social change under the first black President of the United States. The red letterpress stamp below the image, replicating an institutional stamp or a collector’s mark, depicts a fleeing Ku Klux Klansman as a plucked chicken clutching a cross with flames rising behind. In 1999, in his etching 'Que viene el Coco' ('Here comes the Bogeyman'), Chagoya had depicted David Duke, then Louisiana’s state representative and former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, as the real threat in place of Goya’s bogeyman. 'Return to Goya, no. 9' was produced as a benefit edition for the International Print Center New York, a not-for-profit organization founded in 2000.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2017 9 Mar-18 Jun, London, BM, G30, The American Dream
2020-21 8 Oct-31 Jan, Madrid, La Caixa Forum, The American Dream: pop to the present
2021 2 Mar-13 Jun, Barcelona, La Caixa Forum, The American Dream: pop to the present
2021 13 Jul-14 Nov, Zaragoza, La Caixa Forum, The American Dream: pop to the present
- Acquisition date
- 2012
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 2012,7077.1