Velázquez had insane meme production

Las Meninas depicts a royal scene sometime around the sixteen hundred. We see a child surrounded by people from the royal court, and the painter himself, Velázquez, looking at us with an indecipherable expression.

And that’s the painting’s first disruption: we see the artist, and we can’t see his actual painting because the back of the canvas is directly facing us.

But there is a second disruption, and it’s even bigger. There is a mirror.

At the back of the room, between two paintings, there is a mirror reflecting the King and the Queen at the time (King Philip IV and Queen Mariana of Austria), and to be reflected in that mirror, they should be standing right where we are.

So we’re intentionally put in the place of the King and the Queen. We have their point of view. At the same time, the artist appears to be making a statement about himself and his social status by inserting himself into a painting with the royal family.

I chose the first meme of this list because I thought it was an excellent use of the format.

This iconic painting, and also the meme, makes us question our position as spectators. I don’t even think the painting is about the royal family at all, but more like a reflection on point of view. The pun on the word reflection was intended.

Did Velázquez want us to explore the point of view of the royal family and what they were asking a painter to do for them? Or did he want to occupy the center of the painting? What is the painting really about? About what’s missing, about the gaze, about the royal family?

He paints a painting of the painting, and in this case, we receive a meme of the meme. He really makes us question what a painting implies, who gets to be depicted, and who commands it.

Still, an artist occupying such a focal point of a painting wasn’t a normal thing at all.

It’s interesting how Velázquez manages to provoke thought about who isn’t part of the painting directly, even more than about who actually is.

Could we state that Velázquez invented the selfie? He definitely changed the dynamics through which the gaze was supposed to be organized.

Who’s the painter? Who’s painting the painter? Who’s watching? Who’s being painted? Who are we? The royal family?

Enjoy your weekly classical art memes!