Who's watching? Who's watched ?

[chani]

Diego Velazquez did make a masterpiece with his meninas. Las Meninas works as a sort of hall of mirrors, controlled by the artist in which 3 perspectives cross according to Michel de Foucault in Les Mots et Les Choses. 
An analysis in English for the non French-speakers.
 
Let's quote the first chapter of the book, where Foucault gave his famous analysis of the painting:

En apparence ce lieu est simple; il est de pure réciprocité: nous regardons un tableau d'où un peintre à son tour nous contemple. Rien de plus qu'un face à face, que des yeuw qui se surprennent, que des regards droits qui en se croisant se superposent. Et pourtant cette mince ligne de visibilité en retour enveloppe un réseau complexe d'incertitudes, d'échanges et d'esquives. (...)Nul regard n'est stable, ou plutôt, dans le sillon neutre du regard qui transperce la toile à la perpendiculaire, le sujet et l'objet, le spectateur et le modèle inversent leur rôle à l'infini. Et la grande toile retournée à l'extrême gauche du tableau exerce là sa seconde fonction: obstinément invisible, elle empêche que soit jamais repérable ni définitivement établi le rapport des regards.(...) Parce que nous ne voyons que cet envers, nous ne savons qui nous sommes, ni ce que nous faisons. Vus ou voyants ? (...) Si bien que le regard souverain du peintre commande un triangle virtuel, qui définit en son parcours ce tableau d'un tableau: au sommet - seul point visible- les yeux de l'artiste; à la base, d'un côté, l'emplacement invisible du modèle, de l'autre la figure probablement esquissée sur la toile retournée. (...) La lumière, en inondant la scène (je veux dire aussi bien la pièce que la toile, la pièce représentée sur la toile, et la pièce où la toile est placée), enveloppe les personnages et les spectateurs et les emporte, sous le regard du peintre, vers le lieu où son pinceau va les représenter. Mais ce lieu nous est dérobé. Nous nous regardons regardés par le peintre, et rendus visibles à ses yeux par la même lumière quiq nous le fait voir. (...) Or exactement en face des spectateurs- de nous-mêmes-, sur le mur qui constitue le fond de la pièce, l'auteur a représenté une série de tableaux; et voilà parmi toutes ces toiles suspendues, l'une d'entre elles brille d'un éclat singulier. (...)Mais ce n'est pas un tableau: c'est un miroir.

 

Somehow Live Journal made me think of this painting... LJ works as an interface and as a mirror as well. It's all about reflections and we're seen and watchers at the same time, and we're all here watching ourselves being watched, but there's a place that is always concealed to our eyes still, behind the screen...

Comments

[so-sharlemaine.livejournal.com]

You know, I really like and appreciate art, although it doesn't always draw me in. When I read an analysis like the one linked too, I think "ok, sounds good to me", but I rarely would have seen all that in the picture myself. I don't know why. Maybe I'm not that smart. However your connecting of it to Live Journal makes perfect sense to me, and that I can see very well.

In dance, music, literature, and theater I do tend to look for or see deeper meanings and interpretation. However art, for some reason, brings out my literal side. I take it at face value and miss all the interpretation.

I don't like that. I feel disconnected and left out.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

It's just a matter of habit in my opinion and it depends on the paintings. I like Velazquez, Bosch, medieval painters, especially Flemish painters, or modern artists, especially surrealists like Dali, or Frida Kahlo who all used lots of symbols, mise en abyme and hidden meanings, I guess they fit in the way my analytical mind works. But I'm not sure I would make the same effort with painters I like less. I'm not that fond of impressionism for instance...so I usually don't try to guess interpretations.

I'm glad that my connecting it to LJ wasn't too far fetched ! ;- )

Woohoo we just made a try against the English!!!!

*watching a France vs England Rugby match*

[so-sharlemaine.livejournal.com]

Yay, French rugby! Now THAT'S something I would have no problem interpreting. ;-) Speaking of French Rugby.... I just ordered a book and DVD off Amazon yesterday that has the pics of the French Rugby team. It's called "Dieux du Stade." MeOW! Can't wait for it to arrive. :-)

I like medievil art, but I also like the impressionists. I would love for you to be my guide through The Louvre one day. I'd like to see it through your eyes. I'm sure I'd get a lot more out of it.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

You go girl!

The DVD is supposed to show you not only the pictures of the calendar but also the making off...:- )

As I'm watching the match, I'm now imagining the kind of commentaries you would do! LOL

PS: Last year an American friend visited me and of course I took her to both Le Louvre and Orsay Museum(and also to The Eiffel Tower, Versailles, Notre Dame and Jim Morrison's grave at Le Père Lachaise!). So I have a certain training, you can come any time!

[so-sharlemaine.livejournal.com]

Yeeee! That's all the stuff I want to see!

My business travel may be about to slow down permanently, so hmmmm... Paris in the fall....thinking about how I could make this happen. ;-)

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

LJ is an enlargement of something we do in RL too often. We have others watch us and look back in return. It's the first step in communication. Part of this play with looking and being looked at is that we don't know how we are percieved. That's what hidden. We see the painter paint "us" (since we personify the model), but we can't see what he's painting. We can't see how we are percieved. That is constant in RL and on LJ. There is a constant reciprocity, but we don't know where it leads to.

But people like to be watched. That's why LJ can enlarge it. We like to play that game, but also to play the game of mystery. Are we all attention seekers in our own way?

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

It isn't only a matter of how we are perceived. We see the painter paint us...or we think the painter is painting us, but we can't be sure that we are his model actually. Foucault pointed out that constant illusion in "Las Meninas".

It's the same in LJ, because we can never be totally sure that we are the one who's watched since what the others actually have on their canvas screen is conceiled and we can't be sure they are watching at all too !

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

No, we don't know if they are watching us at all, because we don't know what's on the "canvas". The difference is though, that when they watch they see exactly what we want them to see. The screen isn't the canvas until someone writes a comment or makes a follow-up post on something said. That's the true canvas. And then we truly know that we are watched. Like when you would turn the canvas around in the painting. But we cannot. We never know what's inside someone's head.

So commenting and writing follow-up posts breaks the uncertainty, because then we know for certain we are being watched. That's when the canvas gets turned around and we see what is there, what was hidden.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

"They see exactly what we want them to see". Is that sure? Even the painter doesn't have an absolute control over his canvas, and given all the misunderstandings and kerfluffles happening on LJ I'll be prudent about that.

As for the certainty of being watched, well it isn't that sure either. The comments only show that there was a watcher/writer reflecting himself/herself, not that we are being watched because there's always a time-lag, a gap and a place outside, unreachable. Actually every comment is a new canvas indeed, and a new mirror causing illusion and uncertainty even turned around.

LJ is like a converstaion with ghosts, or rather between ghosts!

CWDP...I had to make a connection with BTVS!

;- )

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

Well duh, usually I end up having written something that I didn't set out to write in the first place. What I merely tried to say was exactly what it said: I put words in the order I want someone to read it. My homemade reality reaches the reader the way I want it to reach him or her. What (s)he does with it after is something different entirely.

In the direct sense you describe we can never be watched on the internet. Not even while chatting, because there we have a timelapse as well.
But doesn't RL do the same thing, albeit faster even? There is a timelapse in between popping the question, thinking about it and providing the answer. You can watch the person think, but you cannot reach into his or her brain. It isn't an illusion like a canvas or a text is, but it's still not direct communication and we still don't know if we're truly watched or listened to. We only get the feedback a little quicker. ;-)

Every comment will become a new canvas (for the writer doesn't know if it will be read/watched), but it has solved the first uncertainty. Every comment creates new uncertainty, but solves the previous one.

Is writing genuine letters also speaking with ghosts? Think about the time lapse with those!

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

But in RL communication is also based on other things like body language, the eyes. There's the carnal presence of the other.

Letters are a bit different because once you've sent the letter, your own reflection is lost to you, unlike an online post.

Anyway I didn't really mean to ponder the matter of communication, and the fact you can never reach what's happening in someone's else mind, but I probably didn't express myself clearly enough to make my point. I was simply playing on the idea of a hall of mirrors...

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

No, I do think you made your point clear, but when pondering on it, you come to communication rather quickly, because that's what you do on LJ: you communicate. It isn't really watching someone else, it's watching what you made and someone else watching it from behind another screen.

In which case you get the infinite mirrors, of course. ;-)

I think I mainly understood things differently because I see meaning and communication inherent in LJ, where it isn't there in a painting. (At least it isn't the core meaning of the painting).

Anyways, I liked the discussion we had. *g*

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Well obviously you and I did communicate here. ;- P But I wonder if LJ is mostly about communication.

As you know very well, I rather think that boards, forums are place where people gather and communicate. A personal LJ is slightly different IMO.

It isn't really watching someone else, it's watching what you made and someone else watching it from behind another screen.

Exactly...you can never watch the other person, you can only watch the canvas, which brings us back to Velazquez' painting!

;- )

Bonne nuit et bisous!