Plate 26 from ‘The Disasters of War’ (Los Desastres de la Guerra): ‘One can’t look.’ (No se puede mirar.)

Description

In One can’t look, civilians kneel and recoil before gun barrels entering from the right, their gestures making fear and helplessness immediately visible. Francisco Goya’s One Can’t Look confronts the viewer with a scene whose violence is imminent. The weapons belong to a force largely outside the image, while the threatened people remain fully exposed.

Made in 1810 and published in 1863, plate 26 of The Disasters of War uses etching and tonal work to concentrate attention on the victims. The title acknowledges the impulse to turn away, yet the composition gives that impulse no reassuring alternative. Goya makes looking itself uncomfortable by placing human faces and bodies before anonymous military force. Its severity lies in the unequal encounter, where individuality belongs to those at risk and power appears only through the machinery directed against them.

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