The aim of this paper is to analyze why Diego Velazquez’s painting “Las Meninas” is also regarded as a manifestation of the tradition of “critical thinking” that crystallized with modern philosophy as discussed by Michel Foucault in “The Order of Things.” French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault was the most influential public figures with the 20th century in European and American intellectual circles. He spent most of his academic tenure as Professor with the History of Systems of Concept at College de France, though lecturing at University of California at Berkeley for a year and giving guest lectures. He is noted for his research into this sort of areas as sexuality, madness, reason, incarceration as well as other foundational historical, social and philosophical issues. He was also active politically, advertising the agenda of radical left and campaigning for your rights of marginalized groups, such as homosexuals (Miller, 2000).
Michel Foucault’s fascination with Velazquez’s “Las Meninas” is associated with the painting’s preoccupation with exploring 2 philosophical concepts Foucault explored widely in his works, namely the notion on the gaze and also the concept of representation. The simple fact that the painter (a self-portrait of Velazquez) is looking at anything that is supposed being invisible to the spectator invites those with regards to the painting to apprehend themselves.
Thus, spectators are prescribed an active instead of passive role in observing the painting:
“We are observing ourselves being witnessed by the painter, and created visible to his eyes by the exact same light that enables us to see him. And just as we are about to apprehend ourselves, transcribed by his hand as while inside a mirror, we find that we can in reality apprehend practically nothing of that mirror but its lustreless back.”
Foucault’s exploration from the program of observation is in accordance with the interactionist technique to knowledge creation. As O’Farrell (2008) informs, “Foucault uses the term [gaze] to refer on the truth that it's not merely the object of knowledge which is constructed but also the knower.”
The painting represents spectacle-as-observation, given that the painter as well as other figures take into account the painter’s models that should remain invisible towards spectator. Yet the spectator can see the painter’s models, King Philip IV and his wife, inside the mirror that is certainly placed at the wall during the back the room.
While spectators can see the figures inside the mirror, the painter himself or any person of his posse are not searching at the mirror, so it remain invisible for them. Foucault (1994) notes that “[t]here are, it's true, some heads turned away from us in profile: but not 1 of them is turned far ample to see, at the back with the room, that solitary mirror, that small glowing rectangle that is certainly absolutely nothing other than visibility, yet with out any gaze able to grasp it, to render it actual, and to enjoy the suddenly ripe fruit in the spectacle it offers.”
This phrase calls to the question the foundations of solipsism – whether objects truly exist if not regarded, observed, gazed at by a living being. Foucault’s statement how the mirror just isn't rendered real by anyone looking at it suggests how the painting implicitly probes the thought of solipsism. The notion of gaze, central towards analysis on the painting, is linked to a variety of other, more substantial philosophical issues. For example, Foucault’s interest within the dilemma of representation stems from his conviction that representation is inherently linked to knowledge. “Las Meninas,” by virtue of its spatial organization, allows software package of deconstructive ways to analyzing the painting itself and critically reflecting on concepts that are employed in this analysis. As Denzin (2007) notes, “a deconstructive reading engages four paired terms: (1) the actual and its representations in a text; (2) text and author; (3) presence and lived experience; (4) subjects and their intentional meanings” (p. 69).
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