Response: Reflections on ReflectionsAuthor(s): Emily Umberger and Francesca BavusoSource: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 92, No. 1/2 (March–June 2010), pp. 54-57Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27801658 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 14:16

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The ArtBulletin.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.55 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:16:31 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

54 ART BULLETIN MARCH-JUNE 2010 VOLUME XCII NUMBERS 1-2

Response: Reflections on Reflections

Emily Umberger and Francesca Bavuso

The meditation of anthropological historian Byron Hamann

on the role of Mexican colonial objects in Diego Vel?zquez's Las meninas, by opening new lines of investigation, inspires a

closer look at attitudes toward visual art by disciplines outside of art history. What are productive questions to pose when

engaging with an artwork? What questions do anthropolo gists and historians ask that are different from those of art historians? Where do the different fields overlap and how do

they differ? The field of visual studies has taken various

interdisciplinary paths to exploring the cultural roles of im

agery, but is there something essential that the art historian in particular should do differently? Finally, are all approaches legitimate? Our answer to this last question is yes, but with one reservation?that the scholar is conscious and transpar ent about aims, evidence, methods, theories, and assump

tions, as well as the characterization of results. A scholar may ask questions coming from another field?in this case, colo

nial studies?but if the intention is historical reconstruction,

he or she needs to differentiate clearly between later points of view and those expressed at the place and during the time under investigation.

A benefit of Hamann's project is its demonstration to those

engaged in counterhegemonic studies of a productive strat

egy for broadening ways of thinking about the traditional Western canon of "masterpieces." Thus far, such studies have

led mostly to an expansion of the lists of artists, subjects, and media worthy of study, as well as to the discovery of underly ing biases and conditions that resulted in the exclusion of

women, colonial subjects, and folk and non-Western artists.

Las meninas has long been considered a benchmark of West

ern artistic expression, but, as Hamann shows, it can be

interrogated from a viewpoint far removed from the Spanish court audience?that of Spain's New World colonies?and

addressing issues about global exchange and social attitudes.

Specifically, Hamann identifies a trio of objects at the center of the painting?a red ceramic vessel, a silver tray, and

a reflected red curtain?as probable New World productions.

(The red vessel has been investigated as such before.) He dedicates much space to documenting the importation of

such objects into Spain, their presence at court as recogniz able New World products, and Vel?zquez's awareness of the

manufacturing conditions of one of them (how silver was

mined for the tray). His final contribution is the addition of new thoughts and issues that should be considered in current

debates about the meaning of Las meninas?-in other words,

what these objects may have signified for Vel?zquez. Hamann

proposes that we imagine the inclusion of the people who

produced them as ghostly portraits among the members of the court who likewise served the royal family. He notes a

commonality among all these figures in their (often unre

warded) service.

These ideas raise questions about the contents and inhab

itants of the palace and about Vel?zquez's intentions and

ideas. We find, however, that Hamann's employment of the

material history of objects for this purpose is based on some

unexamined assumptions. In addition, he neglects to follow

crucial lines of evidence on the culture and ideation of the

seventeenth-century Spanish court. Some arenas of investiga tion can await future studies, but others should be addressed

now. The first questions involve assumptions about the use of

paintings as documents. To what degree can we read any

painting as representing a real situation, either material or

social, and as conveying information in a transparent form

across time, space, and culture? As is well known, visual

images are manipulated to convey messages, but even aware

ness of this aspect of art may not help to identify the extent of artistic invention. Investigations in the last few decades

have detected a great deal of authenticity in Las meninas; it

presents in mimetic images the people, space, lighting, and decoration of the palace in remarkable detail.1 Yet the paint

ing has also been shown to be remarkably structured in a way

that could not have corresponded with actual circumstances.

It is difficult to escape the spell of a painting like this. The

convincing depictions can produce the illusion that every

thing else in it is true. Still, much may have been invented by the artist in addition to the composition. Even art theorists of

Vel?zquez's time recognized the deceptiveness of what was

called the "new naturalism" introduced by Michelangelo da

Caravaggio. This is revealed in Vicente Carducho's diatribe

against the Italian genius.2 In a very different tone, the great est novelist of the period, Miguel de Cervantes, satirized the notion of visual evidence as a trustworthy and transparent

conveyor of information across cultures, rendering it ludi

crous.3

As a purely hypothetical example of the deception of real istic art, let us suppose that Vel?zquez's aim was to project an

image of palatial wealth to counter the fact of the court's

increasing poverty. Could he have incorporated luxury ob

jects no longer seen at the palace? Could he have copied objects from other artworks, like still lifes, or a less expensive

vase, one not imported from the New World, but rather from

Italy? Hamann's evidence (and that of other scholars) sup ports the probability that the red vessel was from Mexico, but not that the red curtain and the silver platter would neces

sarily be recognized as having the same origin. What if he invented the red cochineal-dyed drapery to give the lavish

appearance of undiminished wealth through a traditional

artistic conceit, the swag above the royal couple? The use of

depicted objects as evidence of material culture at a particu lar time is problematic and can never be definitive because of

the nature of pictorial representation. Mimesis is one of the

persuasive devices the artist might employ. However, demonstrating that these objects were in the

room and that their colonial American origin was known is

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.55 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:16:31 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

INTERVENTIONS: UMBERGER AND BAVUSO RESPOND 55

actually less important than figuring out what their forms and sources might have meant to the seventeenth-century audi

ence. To reconstruct the possibilities would require an ex

pansion of research in a number of directions. One direction

calls for the comparable examination of the rest of the paint

ing: the determination of the material histories of the other

depicted objects or of the materials actually composing the

painting and its frame.4 Might the overall results reinforce or

contradict Hamann's interpretation of the three highlighted

objects? Might the specific focus on imported or colonial

origins help explain other elements? Might this general ex amination of objects somehow complement or throw into

question interpretations of previous observers? The discus

sion of three items alone is not sufficient to accomplish this

goal. Another necessary direction of inquiry would be the

study of literature of the period, not just inventories, travel

ogues, and collection histories but also novels, plays, poems, economic treatises, and even political texts, to ascertain the

range of contemporary ideas about imported objects. Views

of even mundane objects can change greatly from place to

place and over relatively short periods of time.

Before proceeding to further issues of meaning, we wish to

point out how Hamann's concentration on the three objects leads to greater visual understanding of Vel?zquez's compo sition by calling attention to their centrality. As he observes,

they connect two focal points at the center of the painting, the princess and the mirror reflecting her parents. This type of observation leads the art historian to note the importance of color, light, and surface qualities to such a linkage. The

polished red form of the drinking vessel and the reflective silver tray are echoed in the silvery shimmer of the mirror and the red of the curtain. The fact that the vase and tray are

small could argue against their importance to the painting, but the personages of highest status, the king and queen, are

the smallest figures in the composition, and perhaps the intention was an inversion of the principle that equates scale

with importance. Vel?zquez certainly played with and in verted numerous visual and pictorial principles in this paint

ing, and the placement of the smallest objects at the center

would achieve an ironic juxtaposition. In addition, one might consider other physical properties, for instance, luminosity and relative sharpness of focus, which in turn could have

culturally determined meanings. A study of the functions of art in the Spanish palace, the

environment in which Vel?zquez painted Las meninas, con

firms the idea that he anticipated multiple readings on dif ferent levels, intentionally including clues that could catalyze all of these. The Spanish court used art as a setting for the

actions of living people?a concept visualized in the depic tion of paintings on the walls as background to the portraits in Las meninas.0 The court also understood theatrical plays in

ways analogous to their readings of paintings on the walls. In

both art forms, there was a distinction between the arranged

plot and setting and the less choreographed activities of the court inhabitants in front of the stage or painting, but the

boundary between the spaces of art and life was permeable, at

times clearly separating them and at times allowing move

ment between them. All art had elements distancing it from

reality (for instance, depictions of fictional characters), but other elements could allude to the historical present, and

these could be specific and pointed.6 The interp?n?tration of art and real world is apparent in Las meninas, of course, in its

extension of the painted world to include the space before it. In the palace, the metatheme of both painted art and plays

was power, either represented directly by portraits of rulers

and historical narratives or allegorically by biblical, mytho logical, and fictional narratives. This is not surprising at an

imperial court. More specific to the seventeenth-century

Spanish court was the conceptual role of artists, both play

wrights and painters, as ministers to the king, as advisers on

his character, behavior, and judgment more than as analysts of particular political situations. Plays of the period reveal that pictures on the palace walls were also the subjects of conversation.7 Both the immediate audience of the court and

the wider audience of the population of Madrid shared with

painters and playwrights a broad range of interests and

knowledge. Like a play, the painting could lead to audience

interpretations connecting art and life more directly and

broadly than their creators ever anticipated.8

It is against this background that we must see Vel?zquez's

complex of images and ideas, in which he seemingly antici

pated viewers with different depths of knowledge as well.9

Still, despite his obvious control of both types of complexity, not even Vel?zquez could have anticipated the readings of

anonymous future audiences. As a man of his period, he

verbalized his thoughts in the terms of his historical setting and structured them according to its epistemes. The question is not what he had the resources to know so much as what

among these resources drew his attention, and how he

thought about them. In what debates did he participate? How did he structure his statements? Most difficult to ascertain in visual art are the character, personality, and stances of the

artist, just as it is to determine those of the people portrayed. This is especially true of Vel?zquez, whose verbal and visual statements are typically ambiguous and subtle. Although scholars cannot say exactly where Vel?zquez stood on certain

issues, they can at least reconstruct the issues themselves and

document the way arguments were expressed in his time. In

light of the variety of interpretations attributed to Las meninas in the past century, the study of the period's structures is

crucial to verify any of them, and this would include inter

pretations based on Hamann's new considerations. In addi

tion to telling us what the artist might have been pondering, they can reveal what he most likely was not.

Determining the relative probability of a particular line of

thought behind the painting is a matter of balancing the historical documentation of a motif s currency in seven

teenth-century Spain with its role in the pictorial structure.

Once we become aware of the three objects at the center of

the canvas, we need to ascertain whether their centrality has

meaning beyond the formal roles described above. Further,

we would ask if Hamann's hypothesis corresponds with the

preoccupations observable in people of the period. Hamann

demonstrates that knowledge of the colonial origins of such

objects was standard among Madrile?os, but he does not

demonstrate that Vel?zquez and his contemporaries would

have linked these objects to the people involved in their manufacture and importation. Indeed, knowledge of the so

ciety and other examples among Vel?zquez's paintings lead to different, more likely possibilities. The mirror places the

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.55 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:16:31 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

55 ART BULLETIN MARCH-JUNE 2010 VOLUME XCII NUMBERS 1-2

royal couple near the princess, a juxtaposition that suggests ideas surrounding the theme of the "mirror of princes."10

Among other functions, the mirror in Las meninas probably represents metaphorically the self-reflection necessary for

effective rule. (In this, Vel?zquez was evoking his audience's

understanding of mirrors and paintings as mirrors, a com

monplace in contemporary art forms, while at the same time

conveying the importance of his own advisory function in the

royal household.) Since the princess is connected composi

tionally to the mirror, the implication may be that her par ents are providing an example for her of royal self-examina

tion.

In such a context, the presence of the red ceramic vessel

can be approached better through comparison with an ear

lier painting by Vel?zquez, the Water Seller ofSeville (1619). In this painting the water seller, the oldest of three generations of men, passes a goblet of water to the youngest, while a

mature man in the background drinks. It recalls a typical theme of the period, the three ages of man, but in a novel

composition involving anonymous people from different

classes of Spanish society. Although the passing of water to a

royal child transfers the idea to a very different setting, in

both paintings the theme seems to be the passing of some

thing essential from older generation to younger. If Vel?z

quez's intent was to emphasize the quality of the water, this

might actually support the assertion that the vessel was from

Mexico, not an imitation, in that the clay unique to vessels

from Guadalajara perfumed the taste of water in a distinctive

way. The vessel's clay would be comparable in this way to what

is commonly thought to be a fig in the goblet presented to

the youth by the Sevillian water seller, as the fig likewise

signaled the special quality of the water.11 The previous mode of interpretation that Hamann relates

to his own is one that links Las meninas to ideas about labor

and production, but with a different twist. Past interpreta

tions connect the painting to contemporary attempts among

Spanish painters to be recognized as practitioners of a liberal

art, in contrast to guild craftsmen.12 The objective was the

separation of artists whose products were intellectual from

those whose products involved manual labor more than

ideas. Supported by the playwright Pedro Calder?n de la

Barca, this movement was obviously of great importance to

the artists at the Spanish court and involved notions of class

differences between artists and artisans.

As Hamann notes, there is good reason to suppose that the

issue of the status of his art was crucial to Vel?zquez person

ally, because if painting was considered work or craft, he

would be denied acceptance into the knighthood of the

Order of Santiago, which he was seeking at the time that he

painted Las meninas. The noble members of this knighthood were not manual workers. It is for this reason that scholars

have pointed out that Vel?zquez depicted himself not as

working on the canvas in Las meninas but rather as gazing out

at the subject, to underscore the role of thought in his

creations. The widely accepted conclusion is that Las meninas

is a statement about the nobility of painting and, thus, the

artist's nobility. What is significant about this is that

Vel?zquez seems to have been distancing himself intention

ally from the labor of craftsmen (and the lower classes that

they came from) rather than identifying with them.

Relevant to questions of the historical nature of epistemes is Michel Foucault's The Order of Things, which Hamann cites at the beginning and end of his essay.13 Although Foucault's work seems not to figure in Hamann's argument otherwise,

the French philosopher's overall theme in this book is rele vant. Foucault's concerns were fundamental shifts that he saw

in the general structures of European thought in the years around 1650 and again around 1800, which he casts as the onset of the modern age. The important message is that

although certain general concerns or issues are almost uni

versal, the arguments around them can vary greatly in struc

ture and emphasis according to time and place. Even the

persistence of a theme?for instance, the origins of manufac

tured objects?may disguise subtle differences in its treat 1 4

ment.

In this light, Hamann's approach to the painting's mean

ing can be classified as generated by modern structures of

thought rather than those of the age that produced Las

meninas. His suggestion is that the three items at the center of

the painting take meaning from consciousness of their geo

graphic origin. What is not and probably cannot be shown is

that Vel?zquez would have thought about the labor behind

these objects in the same way that modern scholars do. This

is not to say that modern scholars are incorrect in their

perceptions about colonial life and the moral implications of

forced labor, but there is no evidence that the seventeenth

century Spanish court pondered the ironies of colonial man

ufacturing. As Foucault points out, there was a profound shift

in economic thought about 1800, and it was after this transi

tion that the focus of economic theory shifted to the circum

stances of labor and production. This shift included consid

eration of unfair working conditions and wages and the

immorality of the commoditization of human beings.

Is it possible that Vel?zquez considered labor in the same

way as thinkers from a century and a half later? It is unlikely. It is true that some sixteenth-century Spaniards?among

them missionaries, jurists, and even the Spanish ruler of the

time (Philip IV's great-grandfather Charles V)?were con

cerned about the loss of civil rights and inhumane treatment

of Spain's colonial subjects. It is also true that in seventeenth

century Spain, paintings by artists like Vel?zquez indicate an

interest in and sympathy for people of the lower classes and

people with physical disabilities, something that accompa nied the development of Caravaggesque naturalism in Eu

rope. But it was not until the late eighteenth century that

labor and production became a subject of art, as it did in

general economic thought. What we see in the seventeenth

century are (still unstudied) steps in the development of such

concerns.

In conclusion: yes, Vel?zquez was thinking about work and

production. Yet even if he were not distancing himself from

the implications of manual labor, he was distancing himself

from lower-class artists and craftsmen, which would include

those who produced the objects depicted. Thus, Hamann's

study demonstrates the possibilities that arise from examin

ing an artwork in light of the history of material goods, in this

case uncovering new evidence relevant to exchanges between

Europe and the New World. However, we would encourage

scholars to undertake such studies with conscious sensitivity

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.55 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:16:31 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

INTERVENTIONS: UMBERGER AND BAVUSO RESPOND 57

to the historically contingent nature of the thought projected or reflected by an artwork. In the end, Hamann offers both a

fascinating contrast between the actual history of New World

objects and their contextualization in Europe and a compel ling image of unacknowledged workers as ghosts in the paint ing. What he does not demonstrate is that the European court audience was

particularly conscious of the contrast.

Emily Umberger writes on Aztec art and historiography and on

Spanish and New Spanish art from 1500 to 1800. Francesca Bavuso

specializes in critical theory and in the art and architecture of late

modern Europe. Both are art history professors at Arizona State

University [School of Art, Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz.

85287-1505, emily. umberger@asu.edu, francesca. bavuso@asu.edu].

Notes 1. For example, John F. Moffitt, "Vel?zquez in the Alc?zar Palace in 1656:

The Meaning of the Mise-en-Sc?ne of Las Meninas" Art History 6 (1980): 271-300; and Steven N. Orso, Philip TV and the Decoration of the Alc?zar of

Madrid (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), chap. 5.

2. Vicente Carducho, Di?logos de la pintura: Su defensa, origen, esencia, defini ci?n, modos y diferencias (Madrid, 1633), ed. Francisco Calvo Serraller

(Madrid: Turner, 1979), 270-71.

3. Cervantes's notions are placed within the broader context of New World exploration by Tom Cummins in "From Lies to Truth: Colonial

Ekphrasis and the Act of Cross-cultural Translation," in Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650, ed. Claire Farago (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 152-74.

4. For example, Gridley McKim-Smith, Greta Andersen-Bergdoll, and Richard Newman, Examining Vel?zquez (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). Among the many contributions of this book is the com

parison of the material evidence of the paintings with contemporary accounts of the values of different pigments and with treatises on pig ments. As the authors demonstrate, the pigments mentioned in the Italian-derived Spanish treatises did not always match the pigments ac

tually used.

5. See Emily Umberger, "Vel?zquez and Naturalism II: Interpreting Las

Meninas," Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 28 (1995): 103-5, and authors cited by her.

6. See Margaret Rich Greer's comprehensive and subtle study of the polit ical references conveyed through allegory in Pedro Calder?n de la Bar ca's late plays, The Play of Power: Mythological Court Dramas of Calder?n de la Barca (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), for instance, 102.

7. Plays of interest are Calder?n's El pintor de su deshonra and Darlo todo y no dar nada. For their texts, see Angel Valbuena Briones, prologue and notes to Don Pedro Calder?n de la Barca: Obras completas, vol. 1, Dramas

(Madrid: Aguilar, 1959). On the advisory role of artists at court, see

especially Greer, The Play of Power, 79-82. On the use of portraits to reveal character flaws, also see Robert Ter Horst, "The Second Self:

Painting and Sculpture in the Plays of Calder?n," in Calder?n de la Barca at the Tercentenary: Comparative Views, ed. Wendell M. Aycock and

Sydney P. Cravens (Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1982), 175-95.

8. Greer, The Play of Power, 104-5.

9. Umberger, "Interpreting Las Meninas," 112.

10. Although I find his conclusions faulty, I credit J. A. Emmens for ex

ploring this relationship in "Les menines de Velasquez: Miroir des

princes pour Phillipe IV," Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 12 (1961): 51-79.

11. Juli?n G?llego, "The Waterseller of Seville," in Vel?zquez, by Antonio

Dom?nguez Ortiz, Alfonso E. P?rez S?nchez, and Juli?n G?llego (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989), 82-83. See also Elena Ram?rez-Montesinos's interpretation of the object in the goblet as a blue glass bubble, emphasizing the high quality of the glass and its Ve netian origin, in "Objetos de vidrio en los bodegones de Vel?zquez," in

Departamento de Historia del Arte "Diego Vel?zquez," Vel?zquez y el arte de su tiempo (Madrid: Editorial Alpuerto, 1991), 397-404.

12. The cultural background of these ideas has been detailed by Jonathan Brown in "On the Meaning of Las Meninas," in Images and Ideas in Sev

enteenth-Century Spanish Painting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 87-110; Madlyn Millner Kahr, "Vel?zquez and Las Meninas," Art Bulletin 57, no. 2 (1975): 225-46; Mary Crawford Volk, Vicencio Cardu cho and Seventeenth Century Castillan Painting (New York: Garland, 1977); and idem, "On Vel?zquez and the Liberal Arts," Art Bulletin 60, no. 1

(1978): 69-86.

13. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sci ences (New York: Vintage Books, 1973).

14. On subtle changes in attitudes toward cloth production in late-eigh teenth-century France, see William M. Reddy, "The Structure of a Cul tural Crisis: Thinking about Cloth in France before and after the Revo

lution," in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed.

Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 261-84.

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.55 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:16:31 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions