Francisco Goya's Los Desastres De La Guerra (1810-1820)

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Susan Sontag brings up Francisco Goya’s Los Desastres de la Guerra (1810-1820) to demonstrate an example of how art tries to bridge the gap between atrocities and the public. The etchings titled The Disasters of War, in English, portray the French invasion of Spain in 1808 (Sontag, 44). Sontag points out how Goya was meticulous in his presentation of the etchings to the public, “All the trappings of the spectacular have been eliminated: the landscape is an atmosphere, a darkness, barely sketched in”, the effects that this has on viewers of Goya’s work is that they are not allowed have an easy to look at spectacle to gawk at (Sontag, 44). Sontag also discusses the impact that Goya’s etchings had overall on art, hinting that they created a different