THE IMAGE IN RUIN: FROM GOYA TO CONTEMPORARY ART: THE UGLY AS HISTORICAL TRUTH

Abstract

This article investigates the emergence of the “image in ruins” as a historical condition of artistic representation, understanding ugliness not as the negation of beauty, but as its crisis and critical form. Starting from the classical tradition, in which beauty, order, and reason structured the regime of the visible, the study examines the progressive destabilization of this paradigm throughout history, from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to modernity. Within this trajectory, the work of Francisco de Goya is positioned as a decisive turning point, transforming ugliness into a language of historical truth and inaugurating a visuality marked by fracture, violence, and the impossibility of aesthetic reconciliation. The article argues that in modern and contemporary art, fragmentation, the grotesque, and the formless cease to be deviations and become critical operators capable of exposing historical contradictions and resisting the aestheticization of violence. Drawing on thinkers such as Adorno, Benjamin, Didi-Huberman, and Eco, it contends that the image no longer organizes the world but interrupts it, making visible what traditional regimes of beauty sought to conceal. Finally, the text reflects on the status of ugliness in contemporary culture, questioning its critical efficacy in a context increasingly marked by the aestheticization of horror.