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.