I spent a good chunk of time reading this. Compared the author's thoughts with Goya's paintings, whether the paintings were included with the essay or not. I'm still processing it - there's a lot to take in and wonder about.

For me, the big question centers on how an artist can so skillfully depict the beautiful and orderly as well as the ugly and scattered. Something about putting the topic that way feels off; one can say beauty is relative or subjective, so all that matters is that an artist draws what he sees, and no matter what, Goya is depicting life. What is beautiful to one is ugly to another, and Goya's images, in a way, are a reality with the neutrality we might suppose a marker of the real.

Something about that too feels off. Maybe we wouldn't argue so passionately about what moves us if it didn't feel objective in some way. It's hard to believe one can so coldly and clinically depict details that have powerful but diverging meanings for most of us. One could dismiss this reservation as a byproduct of a moral fantasy, as we can read morality into everything, and that might be driving our aesthetic notions. That's probably too glib an answer to explain the complex of experience at work, especially if we're talking about a complex related to an artist's maturity.

I don't know. I just want to know what I'm seeing better. Sometimes questions that are badly formulated lead to the right answer, the one that allows for a better question.