We Need a New Goya

How many artists today dare to bite the hand that feeds them — and still get fed?

How many artists can we name who are embraced by the establishment yet remain its sharpest critics? I suspect very few — perhaps none today. And yet that tension between belonging and rebellion is exactly where true art is born, where ideas take root that only generations later will be fully understood.

There is no shortage of artists today. Musicians, actors, painters, conceptual artists, writers, photographers — the list is endless. And still their trajectories tend to look remarkably alike. A fiery start in youth, fuelled by rebellion and restlessness. Then success arrives, and the rough edges begin to soften. Some even turn completely, adapting themselves to whatever the cultural mainstream demands. Punk rockers going commercial. Former rebels becoming polished brands. The desire to belong to the establishment proves stronger than their early defiance. And so their art becomes flat, harmless, meaningless.

Back in school in the 1980s, I was probably part of the last generation to receive a truly comprehensive education. Teachers then didn’t care about being cool — most weren’t, not by a long shot — but they cared deeply about shaping our minds, making us think, helping us understand. Being our friend was never the objective.One of my favourite classes was Aesthetics: a weekly walk through the history of the arts, an appointment with beauty across the centuries. It taught us how to look at art, how to distinguish hype from authenticity, imitators from groundbreakers. Those lessons have stayed with me.

For centuries, art was not meant as personal expression. It was craftsmanship in service of the powerful. Kings and clerics commissioned works to glorify their own — often misguided — greatness. Art was a cog in the propaganda machine.

Very few have managed to walk the narrow ridge between serving and subverting power. The finest example is the Spanish painter Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828). In his lifetime, art was still governed by strict rules — Rococo and Romanticism dictated what could and could not be painted. Goya’s talent carried him to the top: first Painter to the King, later Court Painter. He worked at the heart of Catholic Spain yet quietly embraced the ideas of the Enlightenment, a dangerous stance with the Inquisition still looming.

Again and again he smuggled modern, subversive ideas into his paintings, mocking the aristocracy so subtly that his patrons remained oblivious. He produced works that openly criticised society. And at the end of his life, in isolation, he laid the foundations for what modern art would become: self-expression. Long before Manet, Monet, or the Impressionists.

Today, art has lost much of its societal influence. Commercialism reigns, and art rarely moves the public debate. It dissolves into navel-gazing, into displays of personal sorrow packaged for consumption. In an age of micro-attention spans and slogan-shouting, we need — more than ever — artists who dare to stand up and create work that matters. Something more than waving a flag to please the crowd. Something more than a teary interview to boost sales.

It was artists who helped reshape the Western world in the 1960s — with songs, novels, poems, photographs. They were unruly and driven. Success wasn’t their aim; it was a side effect.

We urgently need a new Goya.