As a child I spent every Thanksgiving with my family in
Rhode Island. My grandparents, aunts,
uncles and cousins lived there and we would travel from Massachusetts to gather
at my grandparent’s house. As the family
grew to fifteen grandchildren, we would go to the golf club for a fancy turkey
dinner. Every few years a family
portrait would be taken. Thanks to the
magic of scanning, I have two of those photos – one from when I was about six, the other maybe eight years later. They are wonderful records of our family, of
popular fashions and hair-dos and of portrait conventions of the 1960s and 70s.
(Notice the color coordinated families?)
These photographs got
me thinking about a famous family portrait by Diego Velasquez – a far more interesting and complex work
In 1656, Diego Velazquez, the court artist to King Philip IV
of Spain painted what is considered to be one of his finest and certainly his most
popular painting. It’s called Las Meninas, which means the Maids of
Honor, although it had a different title originally. It is, in essence, a family portrait. We see the King and Queen’s five year old
daughter, the Infanta, and the various officials, courtiers and maids who
attend to her needs, and, in the background, we see the King and Queen reflected
in a mirror. We also see the well
dressed artist at the left, painting a large canvas.
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| Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas, 1656 , Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain http://www.wga.hu/index1.html |
So, this is more than a portrait of the Infanta. You might ask, why is she surrounded by all
these people? If she is the subject of
the portrait, why are they present? Are
they that important? And how can it be
that the portrait painter, Velazquez, is featured here. Who or what is he painting? It can’t be the Infanta, can it? And why are all those people looking at
us? Are we the subject of the
painting? If this is so, are we playing
a role here? Are we the King and Queen
of Spain? Our interpretation of the
meaning of the painting is dependent upon whom we believe to be standing in
front of it. And we don’t have to choose
just one explanation. As we shift our
viewpoints, we become aware of more possibilities of interpretation -- more
questions and answers reveal themselves.
The philosopher Michael Foucault was fascinated by this aspect of the painting
and described it eloquently in the introduction to his groundbreaking work, The Order of Things, “in
this precise but neutral place, the observer and the observed take part in a
ceaseless exchange.”
When Las Meninas
was created, Renaissance conventions of painting had long been established that
ensured that we, the viewer, looked into a painting, into another space – as
though we are looking through a window into another world that is ours to
contemplate, yet remains separate from our own.
And now, a century and a half later, Velasquez challenges those
conventions. These people he has painted
are not confined to their own space. They
are acknowledging the fiction of the painting and looking out at us. And Velazquez has done something even more
complex than involve us, his audience. Since
we are able to engage with this art work, and can change its meaning depending
upon our questions, and our answers, the painting is not complete, nor is it
entirely successful, unless we acknowledge and play our part in it.
We keep looking – we play our part. The ceaseless exchange endures in faded
family photographs and in great masterpieces like Velasquez’s.
