Flex Mentallo

I’ve long been fascinated by mirrors and this is my sorry attempt to create the illusion. (It's shown here hanging in my last exhibition, some years ago now, and measures roughly 10'x7'.)

In it’s own way it is as disturbing a picture of childhood as anything ever painted.

The renowned American artist John Singer Sargent is known to have visited the Prado and made a transcription. In his lifetime Sargent, quite unjustly earned a reputation for being all technique and no substance (since he had the misfortune to be living in an age when “modern art” was coming to the fore and he was seen as an academic). He is better appreciated today. The Daughters of Edward Darley Bolt, 1882 another of my favourites, and of which as a student I myself made a transcription, clearly shows his fascination with and understanding of Velasquez both in the magic of his – quite different but masterful - technique, and by his use of depth of field and handling of space, light and shadow to bring out the psychology of what is probably his masterpiece.

Artists ever since have like me been fascinated by it, and tried to plumb its depths. Picasso painted no less than 47 versions.

But in later life his technique became increasingly loose. We might say, “impressionistic” - yet there is no sense of sacrifice of detail. In fact quite the reverse! From a distance, his figures appear stunningly real. Yet the illusion breaks down the closer we approach, until the whole literally dissolves into a swirl of seemingly random marks that make no apparent sense. Which is to say that you could stare and stare for hours and still not figure out how the artist – using short brushes as can be seen in the painting, meaning he is up close and personal –just knows that a certain arrangement of seemingly disconnected abstract marks will collapse into reality from a distance of 7 to 10 feet!

So it is Velasquez consistent handling of tone throughout that holds the picture together. Most dazzling of all is his handling of paint. Like Rembrandt and Vermeer he owed a debt in his formative years to Caravaggio, whose work had become known in Spain and the Netherlands either before or soon after his death. To contrast his early and later styles, for example, here is Velasquez “Immaculate Conception”, painted when he was just 17. We are struck not only by the maturity of his technique, but also by the plain reality of the Virgin’s features. Like Caravaggio before him, he used ordinary people – in this case a local village girl – as the models for his paintings. And it is this that makes the painting so immediately moving, for we know we are seeing an ordinary person – a real person – in the throes of a miracle.

The empty space behind her and her menagerie is astonishingly rendered. The artist paints not the room but the space it contains. To show how impossibly difficult this is, here is an etching by Goya, an equally great Spanish artist, and probably the greatest etcher who ever lived – perhaps only Rembrandt exceeds him. But in his transcription he focuses on foreground and background, and consequently the middle space collapses, and with it the carefully wrought layers of illusion.

Equally astonishing is the artist’s handling. Most truly impressive is the handling of air and space. Forms appear to cohere in dazzling arrays of light and shadow. The Infanta appears to be breathing.

But most extraordinary of all is the inference that the painting on Velasquez canvas is indeed the one we see! In other words he is showing us precisely what he sees, including himself. And if that is the case, it means that the artist is not looking out at us at all, nor is the Infanta looking at her Royal parents. They are both staring at their own reflections in a mirror. This would mean that the painting we see is also contained within itself, on the canvas we cannot see. It would mean that we are not as we first thought looking at the people at all, but their reflections. Which would mean that we are looking at a painting of a mirror, in which because we are staring into it we should be reflected. And the man in the background is behind us. But we are not there, meaning that it is we who are evanescent, as we pass by. Nor are we present to them, yet they look right at us across a bridge of slow time. What really does my head in then is to try to establish where on earth the King and Queen are actually standing, since they are not then the subject of the canvas Velasquez appears to be painting - for they are reflected in a mirror, which is reflected in a mirror, in neither of which they are actually present! Reality is an illusion and art is an illusion of an illusion.

To underscore his point, he makes the Infanta’s menagerie – a sort of distorted reflection of the Royal Court of which he has long since been a courtier - the true subject. Even the Infanta will pass away he seems to say, but the painting will live on through the ages carrying her image. Yet even this does nor appear to be the complete answer, for given the scale of their reflections, the implication appears to be that the King and Queen should actually be standing in the space between the artist and the mirror, thus blocking his view of their reflection. That only their reflections are present once again underscores the theme of mortality. There is a man standing in the outer hall, looking in on the scene, but from outside the action. He is a passive observer, much like us. He, like us, is part of time. Like us he stares in upon a scene that is outside time, preserved in the amber of the artist’s gaze.

Have we become the subject of the artist’s regard, standing in place of the King and Queen? Are we meant to see ourselves somehow no longer as passive observers but in the painting? Paradoxically they appear more in focus when seen at a distance. Up close they seem to dissolve into fugitive shadows. Perhaps then Velasquez is asking us to muse upon the transience of earthly power (at a point in time when Spain was a superpower)?

As we look a second time, we note that the King and Queen of Spain appear to be reflected in a mirror at the back of the room. Then one thinks, “Aha” It is not the Infanta who is being painted, but her parents, whose painted image is being reflected, and she has dropped in on them for an impromptu visit! But if they are reflected in the mirror, where are they standing? If we were to suppose that they are the subjects of the painting, then surely they would be standing where we are? For on the left isn’t that the artist himself, peering round the side of his canvas?

In 2004, the video artist Eve Sussman filmed 89 Seconds at Alcázar, a high-definition video tableau inspired by Las Meninas. The work is a recreation of the moments leading up to and directly following the approximately 89 seconds when the royal family and their courtiers would have come together in the exact configuration of Velázquez's painting. Sussman had assembled a team of 35, including an architect, a set designer, a choreographer, a costume designer, actors, actresses, and a film crew.

I thought I would discuss some of the paintings that most fascinate me and have had a direct influence on my own work. I’ll also show the work I did in response, so you can mock, and laugh at the absurdity of the comparison. But sometimes the greatness of paramount works of art is easier to relate to when we see how mere mortals attempt in vain to emulate them. Las Meninas 1656 Diego Velasquez’ painting of Las Meninas has been frequently described as the greatest painting ever painted. At first sight the subject is quite conventional for the period, one of many such he painted for the Spanish Royal Court. The Infanta and her maids seemingly pose for the artist, and we are struck by the informality of her pose, as though we were seeing the moment preceding the formal arrangement. Perhaps the little girl is tired of being stuck in a room with nothing to do but stand quite still, and her dwarfs, pets and maids are trying to distract her so that she will be good.

These are fabulous!

This is what I look like when no-one visits my sales threads!

Stunning book! You never see this one. I've got double vision!!! That's the only copy showing as yet on the Census - now you will have the only two!

Stunning book! You never see this one.

Holy me two!

Please post whatever interests you!

I have a complete set of this title, Master Morello, so you could hardly escape notice!

That is brilliant - and highly original.

These are beautiful and put me in mind of - well,nobody. Please sir, can we have some more?

Very nice - puts me in mind of Virgil Finlay

That is simply gorgeous!