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Portraying the unrepresentable: “the methodical eye” of the early modern meta-painting. “Las Meninas”, from Velazquez to Picasso

2015; Bucharest University Press; Volume: 62; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

2537-4044

Oana Șerban,

Architecture and Art History Studies

The aim of this paper is to examine and define a new aesthetical paradigm, claimed by the speculative painting, following two different but connected artistic discourses: Las Meninas by Velazquez, and its 58 replicas of Pablo Picasso, the self-portrait being possible only as representation of the fictional author and its authorial Ego. The working hypothesis is that, by resort to this premise, the authorial representation of the painter performed through a self-portrait or the perennial relation between interior and exterior dimensions were created each time differently, using the insertion of a mirror representing a particular manner to give form to auto-reflexivity. Taking into account the elements and the conclusions of the current analysis, the present contribution aims to synthesize general characteristics of the mirror motive and the negative painting as meta-referential discourse. Las Meninas, both in Picasso’s and Velazquez’s representations, include exophoric and endophoric elements. I shall argue that this two types of elements generate two registers of visibilities, remarked as “visible” and “invisible” levels, in Foucault’s terms, the problem of Self’s representation being, in fact, originally constructed as the genuine difference between seen and unseen forms of pure representation. Inspired by Velazquez, Las Meninas, performed by Piccasso, created a new artistic discourse, in which the problem of the pure representation is abolished, the construct being replaced by the couple “self-reflective”-“self-reflexive” representations. “Portraying the Unrepresentable” is nothing else than creating an aesthetical dimension where visible and invisible contents can coexist and generate a fluent and consistent materiality for the pure representation’s Subject, testing on what conditions the terms of the critique change if “visible” is understood as “presence”, while any “invisible” – or at least speculated element as “invisible”- is recognized as “absence”.