What makes this piece special is the nature and the depth of what is represented in and beyond it. The composition puts together what is in the canvas along with what is outside of it. There appears to be a double movement, one of the painting going out of the canvas, and at the same time, of the spectator coming inevitably to play a -central- role in the composition of this representation, becoming for some moments the king or queen being portrayed by the painter and watched by the dwarves, court members and infanta Margarita, who is at the center of the canvas but relegated to a secondary role in the representation
The object of the representation in which we became involved is the representation of classical art and its space being represented, setting itself free from it's object, a signifier without other signified than itself, self reference, deep ontology of language.
2 comments:
Mmm, it really is a good painting, but I had some problems with it last year. I had to write an essay for Philosophy of the Social Sciences about this painting and didn't come out very well...
But, except for that, I think it's a very good painting. Good choice!
Total self-reference, eh? Well, I agree with your point that the painting makes the act of looking apparent, leading us to think about the process of representation when we might have usually focused on the representation (the scene) alone. Yet while this experience of self-consciousness blurs the lines between subject and object, can you really say that the position of the object disappears altogether? And if it did disappear, wouldn´t that also mean that language itself would disappear, being a system of references?
corrections:
This canvas plays a central role in western art history and *is also* one of the most widely analyzed *pieces* of art. We've seen it - and some variations of the concept- in different contexts, from art books to t-*shirts.*
(check your spelling in Microsoft Word before posting!)
nice work
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