Foucault and The Failure of Language in “Las Meninas”

In his essay “Las Meninas,” Foucault performs a deep analysis of a 1656 oil on canvas

painting by Diego Velasquez of the same name. Foucault is interested in the painting as a

reference to a certain historical process, its unique composition serving to underscore his general

thesis, that the meaning of cultural artifacts in general lies not in their efficient cause—the

beliefs and actions of the author—but in their nature as signs per se, constructed by a historical

process. By construing the meaning of the work in these terms, Foucault questions what he calls

elsewhere classical representation, that is the notion that words successfully signify real objects

by way of syntax. Therefore, in determining the content of Velasquez’s painting, Foucault argues

that the observer cannot simply name the subjects of the painting and thereby identify the objects

they see. Rather, what is seen is a method of discourse, the act of representing itself, never the

signified, always the act of signification. By drawing art criticism into the broader interpretive

concepts of discourse and representation, Foucault deploys a series of arguments which question

the success of language in interpreting the meaning of cultural artifacts.

Foucault draws our attention to Velasquez’s choice to render, not a straightforward

image, but an image of the artist painting one invisible to us; a choice which is complicated by

his implication of the viewer in the painting itself. The scene is disheveled, caught in real time,

just as the painter looks up from his easel to check his work. Children and their attendants play

with a dog to pass time. A few onlookers stand in the back of the room chatting while a
mysterious and dark figure pauses in the staircase just visible through the door at the back of the

room. To his right (our left) is a mirror seeming to reflect, not the painting’s subject, but the

painting itself, only the back of which is “visible.” As “Las Meninas” is viewed and inventory is

taken of its complicated content, it is realized that an implied member of it is missing, the

subjects of the painting we can’t see, those whose likeness is reflected in the mirror: King Phillip

IV and his wife, Mariana of Austria. Surprisingly, the actual Velasquez, not the one rendered in

the painting, has placed the viewer in the position of their Royal Highness.

Arguing from the painting’s composition, Foucault thinks it points us toward a double

invisibility: that of the canvas whose back is to the viewer, and that of the canvas’s subject, King

Phillip and his wife, Mariana. He notes that these two elements are invisible to each other, even

to the Velasquez in the painting who must by necessity remove his gaze from his canvas in order

to look upon his subject. However, Foucault credits actual Velasquez with an additional layer of

complexity. The invisibility present in the gaze of the painting’s subject is also present for us, the

viewer of the actual painting. By implicating us as the subject of the work rendered in “Las

Meninas,” we are afflicted by visual insecurity. “Because we can see only that reverse side [of

the canvas], we do not know who we are, or what we are doing. Seen or seeing?” (Foucault 4)

That we, the audience, become subjects in the work is supported by Foucault’s visual analysis.

Finding lines of composition which vector the painting’s subjects, Foucault argues that every

part of the painting’s structure casts our gaze out, away from the canvas, and to ourselves. This

serves to show that the object of the painting is yet another invisibility, the audience member

being existentially unable to consider themselves objectively, as they are the very person

viewing.
 Foucault notes the temptation of clearing up this ambiguity with a plain reading. He says,

“perhaps it would be better, once and for all, to determine the identities of all the figures

presented or indicated here, so as to avoid embroiling ourselves in those vague, rather abstract

designations…” (9) However, recourse to proper names is problematized by the fact that “…the

relation of language to painting is an infinite relation.” (ibid) Here, Foucault draws our attention

to the fact that to behold an image and to behold a sign representing the content of that image, is

not to behold the same thing. By his lights, this limitation is a feature of language’s nature. “It is

in vain that we attempt to show, by the use of images, metaphors, or similes, what we are saying;

the space where they achieve their splendor is not that deployed by our eyes but that defined by

the sequential elements of syntax.” (ibid) Rather, we should use language pragmatically,

remembering that it is “artifice,” a mere starting point on the way to understanding a larger

picture.

This fundamental shortcoming of language to signify beyond itself is elaborated upon by

Foucault later in “The Order of Things,” that for which “Las Meninas” serves as introduction. In

his analysis of the discourse of “Representing,” Foucault perceives a historical shift of how the

West understands linguistic signs. This unfolds in three steps. The first is the preclassical sign

where words are “…bound by what [they] mark by the solid and secret bonds of resemblance or

affinity.” (58) This is to see signs as divine and discovered. The second step is the classical sign,

which develops a notion of sign as sign, yet with necessary connections to their signified.

However, these necessary connections do not “…necessarily imply resemblance…” (ibid) Their

significance is ideal, replacing the “divinized” inherent meaning of the preclassical sign with the

notion of a concept of signification which is, nonetheless, ideal and true. But it is the notion of

sign per se that bridges the classical conception to the third and modern notion of sign which
characterizes Foucault’s comments on linguistic meaning in “Las Meninas.” The modern sign is

characterized by a dual identity: sign and signified. Here, a sign is one only by virtue of its link

to what it signifies. But this very feature changes the definitional content of what is meant by

sign, “…this content is indicated only in a representation that posits itself as such, and that which

is signified resides…within the representation of the sign.” (64) Here is the crux of Foucault’s

analysis of linguistic meaning. Due to the modern conception of what a sign can be, signs fail to

signify at all. Using an example which sheds light on his analysis of “Las Meninas” (the

painting), Foucault imagines the paradox of a map. A map’s failure to truly signify the terrain it

proports to represent is due to the map having “…no other content in fact than that which it

represents, and yet that content is made visible only because it is represented by a

representation.” (ibid)

The inability to offer a plain reading of the painting “Las Meninas” suffers from the same

problem. The sign of a description will simply refer back to itself as a signifier, and therefore

lose, in a recursive swamp, any reader who tries to escape it. The painting, as a sign, must stand

alone as its own recursive object. This why Foucault urges us to “…erase the proper names…”

of the painting’s subject and “…preserve the infinity of the task.” (10) Language is only a

starting point, like a ladder up which we can climb before kicking it away. “The medium of this

grey, anonymous language, always over meticulous and repetitive because too broad, that the

painting may, little by little, release its illuminations.” (ibid)