|
LAS MENINAS: MORE ABOUT
CAMERA OBSCURA
This painter, the famous
Diego de Silva Velázquez,
hidden, altogether with his
‘camera’ in the shadowed
neighbour room (la Pieza de la
Torre Dorada) in which a precise
combination of tunnelled light
and involving darkness was
functioning as a natural form of
camcorder, would have being
carefully but quickly 38
preserving for eternity some of
the more relevant visual details
of the
funny
(and, otherwise, that is,
without the occult participation
of the painter, sheerly
preposterous)
scene taking place front-stage:
the patently
ridiculous
–and hence, potentially
comic39-
social situation of a group of
people that seem to be acting
as if
they were waiting to be
portrayed by a painter or,
better,
as if
they were being portrayed by a
painter… while they are
already
and
in fact
being portrayed by a (hidden)
painter.40
38
"Las Meninas could be called the
largest oil-sketch ever made."
(Brown, 1986: 261).
39
See Goffman (1963) for the
alternative common-sense (and
psychiatric) view of flagrant
interactional absurdities as
activities expressing symptoms
of mental illness. A somewhat
different interpretative point
of view which, in the case at
hand, could have also been of
(secondary) relevance: note the
pre-eminent role of the two
dwarf-jesters. For Moreno Villa
(1939: 34-35), on the other
hand, the presence of Nicolasito
Pertusato and Mari-Bárbola in
the painting is but the best
illustration of the primary
cosmetic function served by
courtesan dwarfs: that of making
salient, by way of contrast, the
beauty of the Royal persons
close to them.
40
A zero-level, natural kind of
joke is practically embedded in
the
hidden
(to the objects eyes)
configurational aspect of most
camera obscura
phenomena: persons can be
captured into painting while
being completely unaware of
their doing as "painting
models". In the case of
Las Meninas,
though, the joke is not just
that a
camera obscura
did as a
hidden camera
there at the Alcázar Palace, but
in the fact that the noble art
of spying others through the
looking-glass was pictorically
rediscovered by Velázquez as
(and thus transformed into) a
means for laugh and making
laugh. I think this is good
answer to the million-dollar
question:
where is the joke here?
(I thank Prof. Howard Becker for
having asked it to me for the
first time after a presentation
of an early version of this
paper at the session on Art and
Everyday Life, Murcia ESA
Conference, September 24th,
2003). Also, if we follow the
Eliasian line of thinking about
the civilizing process of wild
warrior-like habits into
well-mannered courtisan "rituals
of interaction" (see
infra
for an extended discussion),
there could hardly have been
need or opportunity for a
secondary joking script (say, an
artificial situation could have
been staged in which Infanta
Margarita had to act, talk or
believe in a determinate manner,
e.g. as if some gift surprise or
special guest was about to enter
the room of the Cuarto Bajo del
Príncipe) to be added to the
primary joking situation
documented in and as Velázquez’s
Las Meninas.
Who would, after all, have dared
to bother or delude the younger,
beloved daughter of the Spanish
Imperial King "just for laughts"?
More than any generic innovation
of structural content or
function (Maravall, 1999), it is
this gentle shift from spying
games to joking situations that,
for me, defines the "modern
spirit" of Velázquez highly
praised pictorial realism.
|
|
