A 17th Century "Postmodern" Painting

    Is the artist part of the picture or outside of that which is pictured (the world)? This question is thematized in the famous "Las Meninas" by Deigo Velasquez.

Velasquez, "The Maids of Honor", 1656

• the artist, standing to the left side, gazing at the viewer, painting the image (should he not be invisible since he is painting this scene?)
• the mirror at the back of the room, with the two figures in it (who are King Philip IV and Queen Mariana of Spain, rather than the artist or the viewer)
• the elements on the wall at the back of the room: paintings, the mirror, the "real" figure in the open door (doorways are like windows; cf. Alberti: "paintings are like windows through which the world is seen")
• the man in the doorway who, along with the artist, the couple in the mirror, the princess and the dwarf, are all looking at the viewer, who seems to be placed under scrutiny by this painting


        Does the painting intend to imply a critical, paradoxical examination of the classical mode of viewing, representing, and knowing? Compare Las Meninas to another famous work of the same period, by Van Meer:

    
Van Meer, Art of Painting                    Velasquez, Maids of Honor

        The Art of Painting--unlike The Maids--does not "problematize" its representation. In the Art of Painting, we see the woman the artist is painting, and we see the painter in the room; we simply step into the place of the viewer/painter. In The Maids, however, every element in the painting adds an element of complexity, calling our own position in relation to the painting, no less than that of the artist and his subject, into question. In fact, everything in the painting points toward the "ideal" point outside the painting, the point which conflates all three aspects of representation that are arrayed across the work: that of the artist, the subject, and the spectator. But this point is inaccessible--it is something "missing," as it were, in the classical scheme of representation and "objectivity." These paradoxes seem to point toward the message that it is impossible to represent the act of representing, of knowing.

        Or does the painting intend to point to the only subjects who can "fulfill" the painting, as it were, King Philip and Queen Mariana, thus confirming their absolute power to "cancel" the subjectivity of the spectator, to replace him/her by their majesterial presence? Does it "teach" that the royal subject is nothing, compared to the sovereign himself? And if this political message is the intention of the painting, are they being honored by the artist in this representation, which makes them, as it were, the sole viewers of the artist and their daughter, or are they themselves (and their presumptuous authority, which blots out the viewer's subjectivity) being put to critical scrutiny?

        In paintings, we tend to assume the artist is representing what he sees--that the painting depicts his perspective on the scene as spectator. In novels, we do not make this assumption, e.g. we do not assume that the first person narrator is the same as the author of the work, since the narrator is usually a character in the story. But Las Meninas pretends to be depicted from a point of view other than that of Velasquez. In this respect, it is a kind of "fictional" painting.

        Las Meninas, like the works of Escher, leaves us puzzled over our relationship to what we see before us:


Escher, Convex and Concave

Sites for Las Meninas:

• www.evl.uic.edu
• http://www.keyworlds.com/d/diego_velazquez.htm