Goya: Visions of Flesh and Blood

 The Dowager Marchioness of Villafranca. 

Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga

"There is no way I am going to miss the Goya Exhibition from London and now in the theatres via Exhibition on Screen," Rebecca told me a few days ago as we calendared to go to the theatre on Thursday night.

"And I am gong to take my boys.  They can sit through 2 hours if I pay them."

But today she got an invitation for dinner on the same night, one with her friends who have come to the island for a few days.

Dumped.

I don't care.

I still have the interest in going and went to take a look at the review in The Guardian.  Time Out also prints a telling review.

 The Family of the Infante Don Luis de Borbon, 1783-4. 

Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Imagse

It is not the image of "The Family Infante..." that made me stop and look at the photograph, so much as all of the people in front of it.

How many exhibitions does that remind me of?

Ones where people were lined up in rows in front of the painting.  The heat of all of their bodies.  The inability to move without brushing by people. Powerlessness to get up close to the paionting.  An aching feet and stiff back long before I want to leave the exhibition.

I won't miss any of that when I sit in the movie theatre and see all of these painting on the screen.

Arta