Francisco de Goya’s Los Caprichos comprises 80 etchings from the collection of Museo Fundacion Cristobal Gabarron of Valladolid, Spain. This was the first and only edition printed under the supervision of the artist in 1799.

Here comes the Bogey-Man (after Los Caprichos no 3 “que viene el coco”), features: Conrad Atkinson Jake + Dinos Chapman Saint Clair Cemin Madeleine Hatz Yun-Fei Ji Fabian Marcaccio Yasumasa Morimura Rona Pondick Carlos de los Rios Ray Smith Masami Teraoka Kimiko Yoshida

Curated by Elga Wimmer.

The artists in Here Comes the Bogey-Man give tribute to and carry the spirit of Goya into the 21st century: in a direct appropriation from Los Caprichos as Yasumasa Morimura, Conrad Atkinson and Jake and Dinos Chapman; in a mythological way as Rona Pondick, Ray Smith and Kimiko Yoshida; as socio/political satire as Yun-Fei Ji, Ray Smith and Carlos de los Rios; in a symbolic abstract context as Madeleine Hatz; and a pun on religious issues as Masami Teraoka.

There was rarely a time more appropriate to rethink the relationship of the artist and his society as in Goya’s time and ours. The novelist Emilia Pardo Bazan wrote in 1906 in an article published in La Lectura: The history of Goya’s thought and the progressive development of moral, social, philosophical and political ideas in his work is probably more interesting than his novelistic life. As in the work of Rona Pondick and Kimiko Yoshida there is a an expressive, abnormal and violent ugliness: Romantic Ugliness.

As in Goya’s time our daily news depict monstrosity, insanity, brutality, violent madness, perversity, torture, black magic, all influencing and coloring the work of the artists in Here Comes the Bogey-Man. Only momentarily do we find a ray of hope in Goya’s Los Caprichos as well as in the work of these contemporary artists: and it is a dawn of intellectual rather then emotional hope.