[music playing] We're in the Prado in Madrid, and we're looking
at the great canvas by Velázquez, "Las Meninas." Did you mean "great" in terms of size? Because
it is a very large painting. Actually, it's a painting with a very large
painting inside it . . . That's the same size as the painting it is. In fact, some art historians have suggested
that the painting that Velázquez - - because notice there is a self-portrait
of Velázquez in the act of painting - is in fact painting the painting that
we're looking at. Did you follow that? I did. It is very complicated. So what we're seeing here is, in the center, the princess attended by the maidens of honor, a dwarf, her governess, and some
other attendants. And on the back wall a mirror, which is the sort of puzzle in a way
of the painting. We know it's a mirror because unlike the
canvases on the back wall, this is a much more reflective surface. We can see the beveled edge
of the glass, and of course in that frame, we see
a reflection of the King and Queen of Spain, Philip IV and his wife. And some art historians have suggested
that we must be them looking into the mirror and seeing our own reflection. Others have suggested that in fact,
the mirror is reflecting the image that is being depicted on the
canvas by Velázquez, and then even other art historians
have suggested, yes, the mirror is reflecting what's on the canvas, but the king
and queen are still standing before us. Which is why the princess is
looking out at us, and even the dog is, in a sense,
taking notice. And why there is just sort of
general attention being very much focused on where we are in front
of the painting. Perhaps we're in the space
of the king and queen, and this painting was meant for
the study of the king, who would have been the
person looking at it. So it's very much meant for
his gaze. That issue of looking, of gaze, is I think
for me really one of the central keys to this painting. It seems to me to be a
conversation of glances, a conversation of people reacting to
each other's glances, of looking itself, a kind of essay on the way
in which we see. To me it's more of paying attention. I think that's exactly right, and
that would make sense. This is the king and queen of Spain, one of
the most powerful countries on the face of the Earth at this moment. Yeah, you would have to pay attention to them
if they walked in the room. You would ignore them at your own peril. Exactly. And we can see it when we see the
artist, Velázquez, who is first painter to the king looking out to the royal couple. He would have had, of course, the best
job that an artist could have in Spain at this moment. I'm interested, though, in the sort of sense
of naturalism, the sense of spontaneity, the sense of informality, which is so unexpected
in a royal portrait. That's the amazing thing about this
painting, I think, that makes it so hard to say what it is and makes it so compelling
is that it's not a "portrait." Because we know what portraits
look like. They're on the walls all around us. And they're very formal portraits
of the royal family kind of posing and looking powerful, and that's
not what this is. So there is a kind of informality,
like a genre painting, like we're looking at something like
a day in the life of the painter's studio, but that's not what it is, either,
because it is also a portrait. So it sort of straddles this
weird line of being both those things. It's like an intimate portrait. It's a portrait that gives you a
kind of access to, in a sense, the real moment, the real life
within this palace. In fact, some art historians have
suggested that the painting is in part a way for the artist to promote
himself and to show his importance and in a sense his value
to the court. The idea that as a painter, he's not
just a craftsman, but an intellectual. So here's the irony. If Velázquez is in a sense trying
to support this notion of the artist as intellectual,
and not the craftsman, not the man who works with his hands, the painting is a bravura
example of painting. We can never get away from
the fact that this is fantastic painting; because although there is a tremendous
sense of naturalism amongst these figures, the painting is also nothing but
a series of strokes of paint. And I think that's most vividly
witnessed in the sleeves of La Infanta, of her attendants, or especially that
lightning bolt of stroke of white that goes down the artist's own sleeve
and actually leads our eye to the palette. And here's the sort of most wonderful
conundrum. The palette is a representation
in space of the raw paint which is, of course, the
very stuff that the artist is using to create the depiction of the
thing that it is. What I find so interesting, though, also,
is that there is a time when the reverse happens. Look at the way that his hand
holds the paintbrush. That is raw paint that almost dissolves,
almost refuses to be fingers on a hand. So that he's in a sense playing
on that edge. I can make very loose strokes of
the brush feel clarified and come together and feel like cloth in motion, right? Reflective light, taffeta, what have you. Or I can actually dissolve forms that you expect
and allow the thing to become just the act of painting as well. Just the paint. I think what adds to this is the fact
that we don't see what he's painting. There's a kind of mystery about
the alchemy of painting, about how you take medium and solvent
and pigment and turn it into reality. I would say that it's not just reality
he's after. I think he's after a kind
of condensed reality. I think he's after a kind of
heightened experience of looking, a kind of heightened experience of the
intimacy of this family, of this moment. And I think that he is doing something
that is actually quite poetic and quite philosophical.
