Voces del Prado

Refining my taste and learning to evaluate art

María Teresa González Escolar, General Services Assistant, 1990-2013

The art in the Prado sets the benchmark very high as your work can be up to date but for it to be any good is has to reach that level. The art in the Prado is the crème de la crème of painting. This makes you rigorous and demanding in a way you might not be if you weren’t in the Prado. Here you’re steeped in art and the vibrations touch everyone. I’ve noticed it with colleagues who hadn’t studied Fine Arts or painting but who had very refined taste and knew how to evaluate. You might not have any knowledge of music but you refine your taste by listening to it a lot. It’s the same with painting; by looking so much you acquire a criterion and this helps you to be demanding with yourself and say that not everything is any good.
Not all works are on the same level. No one’s a perfect artist; we’re human and we have our ups and downs. Not everything’s a marvel in art; I mean there are better things and worse things. And evaluating that isn’t easy. “Picasso was a genius!”, well no, Picasso also did pretty minor stuff. And don’t even mention Dalí...He did some very good paintings but there are others that aren’t good which I would have torn up. It’s the myth idea...But time sifts out and that’s good. There are fashions but when time and fashions pass we see what’s good. Art is appreciated because it’s a unique, unrepeatable moment, it’s what remains, not the merely anecdotal. And what’s really art will always be appreciated, now and later. There are works that you think are really nice but time passes and you think “Hmm”. There are people who see it at the time and say that something’s no good. But normally it’s time that decides this and puts things in their place.
For example Goya’s Executions is such a powerful painting that however many interpretations you make of it, it will always be good. I’ve sent my students an interpretation of that painting and all their analyses have been wonderful, all different and all wonderful. Why? Because it has such a powerful structure that you never forget it; it’s an image that’s never erased so that’s what gives it its value. You can’t forget El Greco’s paintings either. His work’s so personal that it stays imprinted on you. Or Saturn devouring his Son, which has a force that I’ve never forgotten since I visited as a baccalaureate student, whereas there are other paintings that you can forget. Another one’s Queen Joanna the Mad by Pradilla, which is an extremely powerful painting. Think about Goya’s two paintings, The Executions and The Fight against the Mamelukes, try to imagine the second one in your mind. It’s more difficult, whereas the first has such a powerful structure that you can recollect it. And both are by the same painter, but The Executions is so skilful.