August 06, 2014
Goya & Freud's despair
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters is an etching by the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya. Goya imagines himself asleep amidst his drawing tools, his reason dulled by slumber and bedevilled by creatures that prowl in the dark.
The image on the right is an old photograph of the artist Lucian Freud. In the picture, Freud sits on a bed, holding his right hand to his forehead in a gesture of weariness or despair.
MoMA New York is currently hosting a new exhibition entitled Jasper Johns: Regrets, which displays works by the American artist inspired by this photograph.