Mirror staged

After reading Lacan's mirror stage and study of the gaze it is hard not to hone in on the mirror(s) and web of gazes (much like Courbet's Burial at Ornans) found in Velazquez's Las Meninas.

In terms of mirrors, one could assume that, in order to execute this painting, Velazquez had to actually use a real mirror. Thus, in addition to the represented mirror at the back of the room which Foucault mentions and which reflects the image of the King and the Queen, there would be a mirror as device, not represented (but technically implied) in the painting. It would stand where the King and Queen, and, beyond their alluded presence, the viewers/spectators stand. If this were so we are sent back to the reality of what Velazquez was seeing, what was in front of him: not the royal couple standing before him for portraiture, but a mirror allowing the painter to depict: the back of his canvas, himself, the group of people standing to his left (the infanta, the maid, courtier, dwarf, etc.), the space of the room behind him (with its hung paintings, and, possibly, the mirror, empty of royalty), and the opened door at the back of the room (the man was probably added in as was the royal couple into the mirror).

If this is a portrait of the royal couple without the presence of the royal couple - who is it a portrait of, then?

What if the mirror, or its reflective function, was not only a technical device but was the subject matter itself of the painting? In this case, as viewers of the painting, we would be the mirror - we would be that which mirrors and returns his gaze to the painter. And the painter would be gazing at an implied or imaginary spectator while gazing at himself. The implications in terms of artist and viewer, subject and object seem far-reaching.

We are spectators of both a work in progress - Velazquez in the act of painting, the surface of his canvas known only to him - and a finished work - Las Meninas. Two time frames appear simultaneously in a single act of viewing: the fictional and the real, Velazquez seen in the act of painting on the one hand, and a wall-hanging (or google image) painting authored by Velazquez on the other (an object, in a sense, an idea reminiscent of the debate between Michael Fried and the minimalists). Navigating between these two times that are in fact simultaneous is one of the elements that contribute to creating an uncertain relationship between viewer and work. It is as if we have to constantly remind us that what is on the canvas in front of Velazquez is not the finished painting we see simultaneously - or is it? The canvas in front of the painter which we cannot see is potentially mirroring us, a reflection mediated by the brush of the artist. Going further we can say that, we, the viewers, can be in a posture of both spectator and subject matter.

Since our eyes are caught by the sight of a canvas within the canvas (but one that "keeps its secret") and a number of gazes looking straight at us, we almost forget that we re looking at a painted canvas, a construct. There's illusionism here, not due to trompe-l'oeil or some technique to obtain a high degree of representational realism, but to trompe-gaze, leading to a psychological or phenomenological experience of the viewer. This gazing back of the canvas, of its represented scene, at the viewer - granted it may appear as a mediated gaze, perhaps a tamed gaze as Lacan would have it - disturbs our sense of distance and separateness.

That is until we identify the mirror in the back of the room as such and the two figures in it. Realizing that, we are almost relieved. We can "kick back" and just be normal spectators again: the missing link is not us, it is the royalty. However this realization introduces a third time, what we may call the time of mind or intention: what was Velazquez trying to accomplish with such a subtle play of gazes and mirrors? Perhaps it was a delay in our perception of and a specific reaction to the gaze.