Oana Șerban
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to examine and define a new aesthetical paradigm, claimed by the
speculative painting, following two different but connected artistic discourses: Las Meninas by
Velazquez, and its 58 replicas of Pablo Picasso, the self-portrait being possible only as representation of
the fictional author and its authorial Ego. The working hypothesis is that, by resort to this premise, the
authorial representation of the painter performed through a self-portrait or the perennial relation between
interior and exterior dimensions were created each time differently, using the insertion of a mirror
representing a particular manner to give form to auto-reflexivity. Taking into account the elements and
the conclusions of the current analysis, the present contribution aims to synthesize general characteristics of
the mirror motive and the negative painting as meta-referential discourse. Las Meninas, both in Picasso’s
and Velázquez’s representations, include exophoric and endophoric elements. I shall argue that this two
types of elements generate two registers of visibilities, remarked as “visible” and “invisible” levels, in
Foucault’s terms, the problem of Self’s representation being, in fact, originally constructed as the genuine
difference between seen and unseen forms of pure representation. Inspired by Velázquez, Las Meninas,
performed by Piccasso, created a new artistic discourse, in which the problem of the pure representation
is abolished, the construct being replaced by the couple “self-reflective”-“self-reflexive” representations.
“Portraying the Unrepresentable” is nothing else than creating an aesthetical dimension where visible and
invisible contents can coexist and generate a fluent and consistent materiality for the pure representation’s
Subject, testing on what conditions the terms of the critique change if “visible” is understood as “presence”,
while any “invisible” – or at least speculated element as “invisible”- is recognized as “absence”.