After reading Michel Foucault's article on Las Meninas, I find myself slightly uneasy at this extremely self-aware, almost overly honest painting. Yet, there are several mysterious things about this painting that are hidden in plain sight, and I cannot seem to explain the feeling that I get from this painting. I'm sure every person that has taken an intro to art history class has studied this painting, and thought about it in a general way. Before I read Foucault's article, I did not think about the space of the painting, what is hidden by the canvas and the mirror, the revealing window lighting on the right-hand side, or even the extremely classical composition of the painting. I begin to realize that I was trained to look at paintings and solely describe subject matter as it relates to history, and that is why I am finding it absolutely necessary for me to look past subject matter and simply describe.
Something I find so puzzling and interesting about this painting is that the viewer takes the position of the sitter; however, simultaneously reflected back at the viewer is the reflection of a couple (in place of where the viewer stands). This makes me question the truthfulness of the reflection, and makes it even more apparent the feeling that we have never or ever will, see with our own eyes our own face.
Foucault describes several rhythms to the painting, and how the composition of the painting is lyrical. The left-hand side of the painting is mainly taken over by the back of a canvas that appears as if it could over-take the artist. The artist stands in the pause between placing his first stroke or his last stroke (the viewer will never know which it is). This effect, that Foucault compares to the mid-swing of a pendulum, is repeated in the background, where a man is either about to leave or enter the room. The mirror, which at first glance passes for one of the other salon-style paintings that hang from and cover the wall of the artist's studio, glows with iridescence, thus giving it away as a reflective object. It hangs immediately to the left, lining up perfectly with the top of the opening of the doorway. The figures in the scene are painted with extremely loose brush strokes, that keep as much detail from the viewer as possible from close up, similar to the curious effect of the back of the canvas from far away. The idea of the self-portrait of the artist has its roots in antiquity (though it is more difficult to prove because of a lack of signature, until Donatello in the Italian Renaissance, 14th c.), and artists including but not limited to Jan Van Eyck, Ghiberti, Rembrandt, and Michelangelo (he completed several self portraits, one that is arguable in his Last Judgement at the Sistine Chapel and at least another in his sculptures).
I cannot seem to get past the space that is created by the lower half of the canvas, the space that is occupied by the 'infanta'. It glowingly reveals an atmospheric space in which I can almost feel the air; the space is so real that it looks as if I could walk right into the painting. I have not had
the privilege of standing in the presence of this painting, but from seeing fragments of the painting in great detail, I could see how that space just dissolves into the wet brush strokes that have no hard edges or clear definition. This double-experience painting is probably similar to standing in front Monet's Water Lilly paintings, from several centuries later.
Foucault's language in the article moves in the same slow motion of Las Meninas. Though the subject matter is concrete in describing the moment of the viewer as the sitter, it is the areas that are slightly blurred that are the most interesting, and are revealed through slow observation by the viewer. Still, I cannot seem to describe in full the experience I have when looking at Las Meninas, as well as other paintings; I find that words cannot even touch something that I sense in such a different way.
Michel Foucault, from "Calligram" edited by Norman Bryson, Cambridge University Press
Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas, 1656
Claude Monet, Water Lilies, c. 1920
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