Goya's bizarre world of Los Caprichos.

• Position: The World Yesterday

"These personages populate a [place] on the margins of reason, where no clear boundaries distinguish reality from fantasy."

'LOS CAPRICHOS," by Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), one of the most influential series of graphic images in the history of Western art, provides a satirical and damning look at 18th-century Spanish society.

Court artist to the Spanish royal family, Goya achieved recognition as an unparalleled painter of portraits and religious subject matter. Later in his career, he began to offer a darker and more cynical view of his contemporaries, even those who supported his work. Enigmatic and controversial, "Los Caprichos" was created in a time of social repression and economic crisis in Spain. Influenced by Enlightenment thinking, Goya set out to analyze the human condition and denounce social abuses and superstitions. "Los Caprichos" was his passionate declaration that the chains of social backwardness had to be broken if humanity was to advance. The series attests to the artist's political liberalism and revulsion at ignorance and intellectual oppression, mirroring his ambivalence toward authority and the church.

"Los Caprichos" deals with such themes as the Spanish Inquisition. corruption of the church and nobility, witchcraft, child rearing, avarice, and the frivolity of young women. Its subhuman cast includes goblins, monks, aristocrats, procuresses, prostitutes, and animals acting like human fools; these personages populate a world on the margins of reason, where no...