Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, 'MOMA: Ordeal and Triumph on 53rd Street'

In this article the authors are describing their visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They describe the museum as being an experience, and that it is not for contemplation of individual pieces but rather entire moments in art history.

MOMA creates a labyrinth of spirituality encoded with social and cultural doctrines that enable a full experience. This experience is shaped by the architect of the experience, the designers and curators. Through curation the art work is brought into existence. As we get from Foucault, the life of the art work/object exists outside the plane and confines of the work and in the space in which it is viewed.

Michel Foucault: 'Las Meninas' in 'The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences

Michel Foucault offers, in his account of Velasquez' Las Meninas, a verbal description of what the painting is. He deconstructs every aspect of the painting and analyses it and then reconstructs it to establish the functioning of indidvidual elements as a whole. He explains, through his description of this work the relationship betwen the visual representation and verbal definition: "And representation, finally freed from the relation that was impeeding it, can offer itself as representation in its pure form."

He discusses the construction of view points and their importance. The viewpoints work in triangulation, and he discusses how these acknowledge and start and finsh with the position of the observer: "These three 'observing' functions come together in a point exterior to the picture..." We learn how through the construction of viewpoints and compositional structures meaning can be created, and he shows its relationship with the formal techniques of picture making.

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how we can learn and understand an image through pure description of what is in the image. He goes on to show the failings and inability of language in the explanation of images of representation.