Review: Goya gave Frankenstein’s monster his Hollywood face. Now this museum shows the artist’s larger power

If you’re exhausted by all the criminality, outrageous racism, gaslighting, antediluvian misogyny, pedestrian hatreds, cruel religiosities, fascist violence, rank cowardice and power-mongering greed that have characterized our national political life since at least 2015, I recommend a visit to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. Francisco de Goya’s rare 1799 working proof for “What Courage!” is having its public debut at the Norton Simon Museum. “Los Caprichos” begins with unsparing social observation, including the destructive avarice of the Catholic Church, which might put you in mind of today’s predatory Christian nationalists. The narrative pivots halfway through to supernatural allegory, with “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters,” arguably Goya’s most widely known print, in which flocks of birds and a cloud of bats swirl in the night. Warhol’s screenprint pictures Mark Rothko’s reigning dictum that “only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless,” while giving a commercial platform to images of women, Willem de Kooning’s Abstract Expressionist trademark.