L'ATELIER ROBERT COANE
- THE CARAMEL AWARD -

for the

WORST ART
DEAD OR ALIVE,
Blunders
and
Art-rageous Attacks Against Art and Artists
"Artistic standards were abandoned, the comfortable cult of the mediocre prevailed,
and presentation became confused with substance."
- J. D. Landis in Longing

Juán José Junquera for his blustering babble on "THE BLACK PAINTINGS OF GOYA" The NERVE of him... "TO DRESS UP A TURD AND CALL IT A CARAMEL!"

Yet another art-theoretician wannabe in the ever expanding lagoon of insignificant and inconsequential poseurs in search of their 15 minutes in the limelight, ever evanescent meteorites that momentarily speckle the firmament of Art before they burn and disappear into the vast vacuum of nothingness. Juán José Junquera, a professor of art history at Complutense University in Madrid who is best known for his studies of 18th-century Spanish furnishings, a glorified 'interior decorator’, so to speak, is commissioned by Antony White, editor at Scala Publishers, specialists in art books and museum catalogues, to write a book on Goya’s notorious Black Paintings which decorated his “Quinta del Sordo” (Deaf Man’s Cottage) on the outskirts of Madrid. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, long venerated as the first modern artist, produced nothing more abrasively modern than the series of 14 images known as the Black Paintings, nothing as ghastly or gory: Saturn ravishing one of his children, a crone grinning over a bowl of food, a figure whispering in the ear of a stooped old man, a midnight coven surrounding a goat-headed sorcerer. Attrbution should be easy enough. There's plenty of this kind of grotesque imagery from Goya in his "Caprichos" and "Desastres de la Guerra" as well as in overtly political works such as "May 2nd". Two Old Men Los Desastres The Coven Los Caprichos Based on “lack of documentation”, not evidence, Professor Junquera concludes that the Black Paintings are misattributed to Goya and that they are really by the hand of his son Javier, the fact that no other known works by this offspring are forthcoming notwithstanding. ''These are fake paintings!” And who, according to Junquera’s theorizing, would be the person who stood to profit most from the subterfuge, the grandson -- Javier's only son, Mariano, a profligate who was chronically in need of funds. Mariano could fetch a higher price for the house, the title of which his grandfather had transferred to him in 1823, if he passed off the wall paintings as originals by the great Goya. There you have it.... So Mr. Junquera would use lack of documentation to pursue his theories of attribution as if this were indeed proof of the opposite. Goya was a reclusive curmudgeon at this point who I doubt had many visitors at his Casa del Sordo retreat. This would account for the Professor Junquera's lack of mention or documentation. Wouldn't doubt it if these were some sort of "private musings" Goya kept to himself, the product of his own dementia resulting from the isolation of oncoming deafness, political disfavor and eventual banishment to France where he died in exile in 1828. May 2nd As far as I’m concerned, a Goya is a Goya regardless of who painted it. Too bad that the only interest anybody seems to have in old paintings is in terms of scandal, speculation and attribution. And the only questions are raised by publicity hounds and wannabes.... Juán José Junquera's is another Patricia Cornwall - David Hockney - Ariana Huffington, bloated, self- aggrandizing claim from someone uniquely unqualified. Here's a man who's formidably out of his element, a furniture expert, making claims about painting based exclusively on 200-year-old archives, innuendo, supposition and extrapolation. And he has the gall to say Nigel Glendinning, a professor who has been writing and researching on Goya for 40 years,"knows nothing about the decoration of the 18th Century." Well, what are HIS credentials in painting? How long did HIS research take??? Cornwall redux!!! Would you come to me with a question about furniture, something I confess to knowing less than nothing about? And why does this editor from Scala Publishers gives someone so eminently unqualified to write on the subject? Sounds suspect and not too reliable to me. Then, when things get bogged down, Mr. Junquera tries to "move things along" so he goes to a magazine, the popular press with his theories. Hockney redux!!! What, before his theories unravel? Off with him to the dustbin of Art History !!! Saturn Devouring His Children "YOU HAVE THE NERVE TO DRESS UP A TURD AND CALL IT A CARAMEL" ...is the inspiration for our less than inspiring monthly award. Here we do NOT discriminate. There are no sacred cows. High and low beware! Our CARAMEL statuette is derived from the traditional cagané figure or 'shitter' from the northeastern Spanish region of Cataluña where no manger scene can be found without one. It's attributes are far more pedestrian here. Fragments of the above text are loosely adapted from Arthur Lubow's NY Times Magazine article,"The "Secret of the Black Paintings".

"Nor wonder how I lost my wits;
Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!"
- Jonathan Swift

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