At the National Gallery Victoria there is a free exhibition of prints based on the theme of The Satirical Eye. At their best, these prints use satire to reveal truths about human nature, while commenting on specific situations and individuals. Many of these prints reached a wide audience, and heavily influenced the public’s views.
Artists included are Francisco Goya (Los Caprichos series), Honore Daumier, William Hogarth and the next generation of English satirists including Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray and George Cruikshank.
I love how some of the artists go crazy and fill the pictures with a lot of surprises. Monsters, caricatures, and strange activities:
There was a lot of women-grabbing!
In France the genre of visual satire had its greatest artist in Honoré Daumier, whose prints were widely circulated and enormously popular in the nineteenth century. Daumier’s ability to render a head, so easily with such expressive lines, adding the finest caricature, is remarkable.
In 1799 the Spanish artist Francisco Goya published Los Caprichos, a series of etchings that express the values of the Enlightenment in their condemnation of prejudice, ignorance and superstition. Unfortunately, my photos weren’t very good and you’ll be better off googling them.
I love the handwriting on the borders of the pictures. Very exciting!
And finally, you have to feel sorry for some of the women in these pictures.
