Issue 1 | 2008
(Re)visioning Heterotopia:
The Function of Mirrors and Reflection in Seventeenth-Century Painting
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The enigmatic term “heterotopia,” popularized
by Michel Foucault in his text The Order
of Things (1966), describes sites that undermine stable relationships,
disrupt conventions of order, and negate straightforward categorization. Heterotopias also reflect a curious
slippage between the familiar and the unfamiliar, a property expressed by
Sigmund Freud’s notion of the ‘uncanny.’[1] Heterotopic sites seem familiar, as
they are subsumed within a society’s conventional ordering system that links
them to other sites, yet they are unfamiliar in that they simultaneously
contradict the premises by which these relationships are sustained.[2] By using heterotopic theory to analyze
the function of mirrors and reflections in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings,
it is possible to illuminate the spatial complexity of these scenes, a
characteristic that is initially masked by the paintings’ seemingly accurate
transcription of an observed reality.
The purpose of this visual play between nature and painterly artifice is
to challenge vision’s role in producing empirical knowledge.
Foucault’s interest in the breakdown of order
characterizing heterotopias was inspired by his response to Borges’ passage
from a Chinese encyclopaedia, which uses an alphabetical ordering system to
narrow the distinction between fantastic creatures of the imagination and those
that exist in reality. Thus, the
effect of this passage is to “disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old
distinction between the Same and the Other.”[3] Similarly, Freud’s discussion of the
doubling effect as a source of the ‘uncanny’ also explores the dissolution of
the ideological bounds separating the Same and the Other, a phenomenon with
important ties to mirrors and reflection, as indicated by Jacques Lacan’s
renowned essay “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function” (1949).[4] The parallels between Freud’s theory of
the ‘uncanny’ and Foucault’s literary study of heterotopia, culminating with
this common interest in mirrors and reflection, underscore the underlying
complexity of these visual devices through their ability to destabilize the
seemingly straightforward transcription of real space that characterizes many seventeenth-century
depictions. By using Foucault’s
explanation of heterotopia, I intend to show how mirrored surfaces in Diego
Velázquez’s Las Meninas, Clara
Peeter’s Wunderkammer, Gabriel
Metsu’s Young Woman at the Virginal
Playing with a Dog, and Johannes Vermeer’s Allegory of Faith maintain and dismantle pictorial order to
heighten the viewer’s awareness of vision itself. In this context, the term “vision” refers to both its
literal and metaphorical implications.
Taken literally, it describes the process of looking; in its
metaphorical sense, it indicates the artwork’s role as a product of the
artist’s imagination. Each of
these paintings uses mirrors in a different way to destabilize, in the same
manner as Foucault’s heterotopias, the viewer’s initial reading of these works
as unequivocal depictions of real space.
It seems pertinent to borrow Foucault’s
concept of heterotopia from its more pervasive application in literary theory and
apply it to seventeenth-century aesthetics, as the opening chapter of The Order of Things is devoted to an
analysis of Diego Velázquez’s painting, Las
Meninas. While Foucault’s
explication of Las Meninas discusses
the heterotopic nature of the painting’s spatial configuration, the term
“heterotopia” itself is never used.
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to expose the complexities of
seventeenth-century verisimilitude and uncover the ideological links that
structure Foucault’s theory of ordering systems. Foucault describes the significance of resemblance and
repetition as means of generating knowledge in Western culture, and cites
representational painting, i.e., painting as a “mirror of nature,” as one
example.[5] Mirror imagery surfaces again in his
discussion of aemulatio, the idea
that patterns of resemblance can occur between things despite the spatial
distance separating them: “There is something in emulation of the reflection of
the mirror: it is the means whereby things scattered through the universe can
answer one another.”[6] This sense of interconnectivity is
articulated by Foucault’s archaeological study as a whole. He claims, “Archaeology, addressing
itself to the general space of knowledge, to its configuration, and to the mode
of being of the things that appear in it, defines systems of simultaneity.”[7] The similarity between Foucault’s
concept of heterotopia and the construction of space in seventeenth-century
aesthetics constitutes one such “system of simultaneity.” By exposing the
mirror’s function as the ideological parallel connecting Foucault’s literary
model of heterotopias to the construction of space in seventeenth-century art,
I intend to fill in the interstices of his conceptual framework.
This transition from literature to aesthetics
can be signalled by turning once again to Freud’s essay on the ‘uncanny.’ Freud states, “The imaginative writer
has this licence among many others, that he can select his world of
representation so that it either coincides with the realities we are familiar
with or departs from them in what particulars he pleases.”[8] By analyzing how Foucault describes the
spatial construction of Las Meninas,
it is evident that Velázquez has strategically manipulated the laws of
pictorial construction, the ordering principles that encourage us to view the
scene as a realistic space. As a
result, multiple ‘realities’ are juxtaposed. It is even more intriguing that Foucault explains the
importance of the mirror in uniting these realities. The mirror’s surface reflects the figures that Velázquez
observes in the objective, physical reality in which he is painting. They are identified as King Philip the
IV and Queen Mariana. However,
these figures also gaze back at the painter from a different material reality
– the reality of the painted surface itself, composed of a careful
arrangement of coloured pigments.[9] Thus, Foucault claims, “The mirror
provides a metathesis of visibility that affects both the space represented in
the picture and its nature as representation.”[10]
Yet, the mirror in Las Meninas does not only self-referentially signal the reality of
the work as a representation in paint.
The gaze of the figures within its frame is also significant in
establishing how the painting functions as a heterotopic space. Roland Barthes defines the gaze as a
visual tool through which time becomes endless. By means of the gaze, “you [the viewer] keep on being born,
you are sustained, carried to the end of a movement which is of infinite
origin… and which appears in an eternal state of suspension.”[11] This unceasing continuum signals an
“absolute break with traditional time,” a quality that Foucault characterizes
as a fundamental feature of heterotopias.[12]
Moreover, the function of the gaze in Las Meninas also relates to Foucault’s
definition of heterotopias as sites that are always defined by a system of
opening and closing that both isolates them and renders them accessible. Foucault suggests, “Everyone can enter
into these heterotopic sites, but in fact that is only an illusion: we think we
enter where we are, by the very fact that we enter, excluded.”[13] This statement is directly echoed in
his explanation of Las Meninas. Foucault claims that Velázquez’s gaze
focuses on the viewers only because we seem to occupy the same space as the
painter’s subject: “We, the spectators, are an additional factor. Though greeted by [the painter’s] gaze,
we are also dismissed by it, replaced by that which was always there before we
were: the model itself.”[14] Since the surface of the large canvas
in Las Meninas remains invisible, a
definite relationship between the gazes can never be established. As a result, the roles of subject and
object, model and spectator are infinitely interchanged in a relationship that
recalls the heterotopia’s link to indefinitely accumulating time.[15]
The mirrored gaze of the king and queen plays
an integral role in maintaining this unceasing spatial exchange between viewer
and subject. In his essay “Of
Other Spaces,” Foucault expands upon the complex relationship between mirrors
and space, describing mirrors as unique sites in which the fictive space of
utopias and the real space of heterotopias converge. The mirror is a utopia in the sense that it projects a
virtual space behind its surface, a space in which the observer is misperceived
as being present.[16] Conversely, the mirror is also
heterotopic due to the oblique manner in which it affirms the observer’s
position in real space: “it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I
look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the
space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived
it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.”[17]
The mirror in Las Meninas constitutes a utopian space in that it shows us the
king and queen in what is essentially a “placeless place.” They appear in the space behind the
surface of the mirror, which is itself not a physical object but rather an
image crafted in paint. Yet, the
mirror also functions as a utopia in a different respect. While the previous example relies on
the definition of utopia as a
non-place, the example to follow will combine this definition with another
aspect of the term: the description of society in an ideal form. According to Joel Snyder, the mirror in
Las Meninas is a visual conceit that
recalls a type of book known in English as “the mirror of the prince.” The purpose of these texts was to edify
royalty, informing them of model behaviour, character, and thought.[18] Thus, the “mirrors of princes” attest
to the longstanding correlation between mirrors and the construction of the
self. Moreover, they reinforce the
mirror’s connection to the definition of utopia as an immaterial place, as
these ideal traits are not visibly present. By representing the king and queen in the mirror within the
painting, metaphorically suggesting their status as ideal rulers, the painting
visually presents the courtly values discussed in contemporary literature.[19]
The mirror in Velázquez’s painting also acts
as a heterotopic space by operating within the parameters of naturalistic pictorial
representation while simultaneously calling attention to these
constraints. According to
Foucault, Las Meninas is a
representation of representation.[20] There are numerous pictorial devices
that elicit this notion, such as the painter standing with his palette poised
in front of a large canvas with its back to the viewer, the numerous depictions
of paintings that hang in the room, and the reciprocal gaze shared by
spectators and several of the painted figures. Lastly, Foucault describes the mirror as “the frailest
duplication of representation” because its reflection is so distant, so deeply
entrenched in an unreal space that is disconnected from the gazes of the
figures staring out into the ‘real’ space beyond the picture’s frame.[21] As a representation of representation,
the painting itself functions as a mirror, i.e. as an intermediary between
illusory utopian space and the perplexing space of heterotopias.
In her text The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (1983),
Svetlana Alpers observes that seventeenth-century Dutch paintings undermine the
conventional mode of reading pictorial realism as an Albertian window to the
world. Instead, Dutch paintings
display an emphasis on surface, making them analogous to “a mirror or a map,
but not a window.”[22] Like mirrors, Dutch realism creates the
illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface. Yet, like heterotopias, which undermine the set of spatial
relations to which they belong, the realistic appearance of seventeenth-century
Dutch scenes is contested by the very devices that were initially employed to
conjure the illusion. As a result,
they reveal the artifice of pictorial construction, focusing the spectator’s
attention on the act of viewing itself.
One convention used by Dutch artists to
exploit the contrived nature of seemingly realistic scenes is the reflected
self-portrait. An early example of
the use of this device is Clara Peeters’ reflected image in the gilt cup of Wunderkammer, her still-life painting
from 1612. As art historian
Celeste Brusati indicates, Peeters’s self-images were not mere renditions of
the reflections she observed in the goblet’s surface. By depicting herself with her palette in hand, Peeters
indicates to the viewer her role in cleverly contriving the realistic scene, “[duplicating]
the mirrorlike artifice of the picture as a whole.”[23] This visual conceit causes the painting
to function as a heterotopic space through its conformation to the conventions of
the realist canon while simultaneously exposing the true reality of the scene,
i.e., its existence as a two-dimensional image in paint.
Furthermore, Peeters’ self-image is reflected
multiple times. This detail is
significant in light of Foucault’s observation that “representation –
whether in the service of pleasure or of knowledge – was posited as a
form of repetition.”[24] He also underscores the importance of
resemblance as an underlying ordering principle that facilitates knowledge
formation. Thus, the multiple
replications of Peeters’ self-portrait in the bosses of the gilt cup function
as a means of ordering the pictorial surface and, like the mirror in Las Meninas, they signal the correlation
between mirror imagery and self-construction. In addition, it has been suggested that the act of recording
her image in a work of art was a possible attempt to overcome the transience of
human life by sustaining her presence over time.[25] This reading aligns the painting with
Foucault’s description of heterotopias as sites that are associated with the
indefinite accumulation of time.[26]
The painting’s title also indicates how the
work relates to the theme of accumulated time. Wunderkammers, or
cabinets of curiosities, were perceived as microcosms of the world, as they
contained artifacts from different global locales in a single space. These artifacts included wonders of
nature and technological feats of human craftsmanship, as well as painterly
illusions.[27] In Peeters’ painting, the stoneware
vase holding the flowers is identified as German, the three shells are from
Asia and the Carribbean, and the celadon bowl was imported from China.[28] Moreover, the vase of flowers in itself
acts in the same manner as a wunderkammer
by bringing together species of flowers that originated in different parts of
the world.[29] In Foucault’s discussion of the garden
as a heterotopic space, he mentions how the gardens of the Persians were meant
to symbolically link the four corners of the globe by incorporating vegetation
from these disparate locations within a singular rectilinear confine.[30]
Yet, Foucault contrasts this type of
heterotopia, directed toward the eternal, with heterotopic spaces that are
“absolutely temporal,” connected to “time in its most fleeting, transitory,
precarious aspect.”[31] Curiously, the reflective objects in Peeters’
still life combine the concept of heterotopia related to the eternal with
heterotopia in its temporal form through their illustration of the vanitas theme. The moral message conveyed by vanitas images is that one should not place undue worth on material
goods, which will soon fade and decay.
This message is presented in Wunderkammer
through the vase of flowers. Many
of the blooms are beginning to wilt and one flower has even been displaced from
the vase, lying in an atypical horizontal format on the table’s surface. In other words, Peeters’ painting
appears to collapse the notion of an eternal heterotopic space with that of the
absolutely temporal – it is a doubling of heterotopic space.
In addition, the dual signification of the
flower bouquet, as a sign of the wunderkammer’s
unceasing preservation of culture on one hand and an emblem for life’s
ephemeral nature on the other, shares an important connection with Foucault’s
theories. Norman Bryson
underscores the similarity between Dutch still lives and Foucault’s research on
ordering systems by stating, “As the work of Foucault emphasises, several modes
of knowledge production can co-exist in a single era (and a single work).”[32] The duality implicit in
seventeenth-century Dutch painting is manifest in a variety of ways. Therefore, while it complicates what is
ostensibly a faithful representation of nature, as a constant element of Dutch
representations it also paradoxically contributes to the underlying system of
order according to which these images were interpreted by seventeenth-century
viewers. For current scholars,
perhaps the most controversial manifestation of duality occurs in vanitas scenes. According to Bryson, vanitas imagery is flawed by an inherent
contradiction. While these scenes
attempt to convey the moral message that material goods are mere indulgences
that will fade over time, they present this message in the form of a painting,
which is itself a material pleasure.[33] It is interesting to note that Dutch
paintings, characterized as “mirrors of nature,” share with the mirror its
value as a luxury item. Sabine
Melchior-Bonnet’s study reveals that mirrors were still rare prior to 1630 and
therefore highly prized.[34]
In Wunderkammer,
reflections play an important role in emphasizing the richness of the
materials, thereby subverting the moral message of the vanitas theme. As
Bryson observes, the objects in Dutch still lives are often rendered so that
they appear finer than the real objects they duplicate. Consequently, the painter’s technical
virtuosity is shown to be superior to that of the craftsman or metalsmith
responsible for the initial fabrication of these objects.[35] This hierarchy is reinforced to an
unprecedented degree in Peeters’ still life through the inclusion of the reflected
self-portrait in her painted rendition of the elaborate gold cup. Her ability to heighten the opulence of
the objects in Wunderkammer is the
result of a technique that Carel van Mander describes as reflexy-const, “the art of depicting reflections.”[36] Part of the mastering of reflexy-const includes working to
“conform painting to mirroring, the process of natural imitation that ensues on
smooth lustrous surfaces.”[37] Evidence of this technique is visible
in Peeters’ treatment of the gilt cups.
In addition, the pile of golden coins alludes to the value placed on
these artifacts.
While it is seemingly paradoxical to present
the vanitas message through sumptuous
visual display, Bryson suggests that the appeal of vanitas images may result from their self-conscious acceptance of
this intrinsic contradiction.[38] He states, “The genre changes at once
if we begin with the hypothesis that the vanitas
is deliberately built on paradox, and
that the conflict between world-rejection and worldly ensnarement is in fact
its governing principle.”[39] While it is only possible in the
precarious non-space of language to connect the incongruous categories in
Borges’ excerpt from the Chinese encyclopaedia, it is similarly impossible
except in the pictorial field of vanitas
imagery to superimpose society’s affinity for material wealth with the reminder
that these objects are spiritually insignificant. Curiously, Bryson’s comment that this contradiction is the
“governing principle” of vanitas
scenes suggests that, rather than subverting a sense of order, it in fact
establishes order.
Therefore, vanitas paintings, like heterotopias, are linked to the cultural
codes that define them and yet they subvert these codes in order to reveal
order in its pure state. According
to Foucault, “it is on the basis of this newly perceived order that the codes
of language, perception, and practice are criticized and rendered partially
invalid.”[40] Evidence of this partial invalidation
of ordering systems is apparent in how seventeenth-century Dutch artists
construct pictorial space. While
they employ Renaissance theories of perspective to generate a naturalistic
setting, their pictures often display an acute attention to surface detail
rather than spatial depth.[41] This observation is substantiated by
Clara Peeters’ still life of 1612.
The position of the objects in space appears realistic, but spatial
recession is restricted by the dark background and, instead, the viewer’s gaze
is captivated by the artist’s meticulous differentiation of the objects’
respective surface textures.
Brusati indicates that “through the play of light differentially
registered on these surfaces, the reflexy-const…
serves to mobilize the beholder’s gaze and facilitate the eye’s movement
through the image.”[42] The ordering impulse signified through
reflective surfaces alludes to a new system of viewing that emphasizes careful
empirical observation as a means of generating knowledge. As Alpers’ study suggests, Dutch
artists’ heightened interest in empirical detail was undoubtedly influenced by
the technical proficiency of lens grinders in the seventeenth-century Dutch
Republic, whose efforts led to considerable advancements in the science of
optics.[43] This correlation between the treatment
of space in Dutch art and the scientific developments in that culture relates
to another characteristic of heterotopias: they are spaces that are
characterized by a precisely defined function within the society in which they
operate.[44]
Despite the contextual specificity of
heterotopic spaces, the correlation between seventeenth-century Dutch paintings
and Foucault’s theory of heterotopias underscores Foucault’s insistence on the
recurrence of certain ideological similarities over time. He attributes this phenomenon to a
continuous Hegelian counterbalance between sympathy and antipathy, which
“explains how things grow, develop, intermingle, disappear, die, yet endlessly
find themselves again.”[45] Interestingly, this underlying “system
of similitude” is inherent in the concept of the “baroque,” reinforced by
Gilles Deleuze’s explanation of “the fold”[46]
and Henri Focillon’s statement that “the Baroque state reveals identical traits
existing as constants within the most diverse environments and periods of
time.”[47] This claim underscores the relevance of
drawing conceptual parallels between art of the seventeenth-century (the
historical period that has been termed “baroque”) and Foucault’s
twentieth-century theory of heterotopias.
Dutch
art of the baroque shares an important similarity with Foucault’s writings that
makes comparison between the two particularly relevant. While Foucault’s explanation of
heterotopic spaces retains a literary focus, Dutch paintings also feature a
particular emphasis on text. As
Alpers reveals, the text in Dutch images is part of the scenes themselves; the
paintings are not visual illustrations of a narrative that exists prior to
their fabrication.[48] The inscription on the virginal in
Gabriel Metsu’s painting Young Woman at
the Virginal Playing with a Dog acts as one example of this integration of
text and image common in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. The text on the virginal flattens the
pictorial field and draws our attention to the surface of the painting itself,
similar to the use of reflexy-const
in Peeters’ still life. This
attention to surface, in contrast to the illusion of recessive space suggested
by the angle of the floorboards and the open doorway, causes the painting to
function like a mirror in that it is a flat surface that simulates spatial
depth.
The
correlation between Dutch realism and mirrors is reinforced by the inclusion of
the mirror on the back wall of Metsu’s painting. Like the mirror in Las
Meninas, this mirror also signals the painting’s role as a heterotopic
space by alluding to the work’s simultaneous inclusion and exclusion of the
viewer’s presence. The angle of
the floorboards, the door frame, the broom, the arms of the two women, and the
red drapery all point to the mirror, leading the spectator’s eye through the
threshold marked by the dog and into the contrived pictorial space of the back
room. Thus, the painting seems to
covertly take the viewer into account by presenting a space that appears to
extend from the “real” space in which the viewer is positioned. Because of the painting’s convincing
illusionism, the viewer may expect to see his or her reflection in the
mirror. However, the drapery is
strategically positioned so that it covers the mirror’s surface. The mirror was a typical symbol of
painting as a reflection of the world;[49]
thus, covering its surface symbolically suggests that the viewer is denied
access to this pictorial space.
The
duality between “real” space and pictorial artifice suggested by the mirror is
further indicated by the window that is partially cut off by the
doorframe. The similar symbolic
role of the mirror and window is signalled visually by the artist’s decision to
position the top of the mirror’s frame at the same level as the horizontal
division separating the window into equal panes. These two pictorial elements are also linked by the swath of
red drapery that extends from the top of the window to cover the mirror. Like the mirror, the treatment of the
window emphasizes the two-dimensional nature of the painted canvas where the
viewer would expect to see a projection of seemingly three-dimensional space
beyond the surface of the glass.
While the window should look out onto a street, the grid of rectilinear
shapes presented to the eye does not depict an identifiable object: “This
detail of Metsu’s picture discreetly articulates that… before being a
reflection of the tangible world or the creation of an illusory space, a
painting is a geometric composition of colours, an organization of colored
surfaces.”[50]
This
ordering principle is reinforced by the entirety of the composition, which is
structured through the geometric configuration of various framing devices,
including the virginal, the doorframe, the window, and the mirror.[51] Based on this carefully conceived
order, the picture of the domestic scene can perhaps be characterized as a
“heterotopia of compensation”: a “real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as
well arranged as ours is messy, ill-constructed, and jumbled.”[52] Therefore, while Peeters’ reflected
self-portraits in the gilt cup openly reveal the artist’s role in crafting
pictorial order, the covered mirror in Metsu’s painting signifies more covertly
the rational ordering of space through artistic virtuosity. This difference in representation exposes
the variety of forms that heterotopias can take and emphasizes the subtle
complexities of Dutch pictorial construction in the seventeenth century.
Like
Young Woman at the Virginal Playing with
a Dog, Vermeer’s Allegory of Faith
highlights the duality between painterly illusion and the “real” space beyond
the picture’s frame. In Metsu’s
painting, this contrast is signalled through the covered mirror, whereas in Allegory of Faith it is indicated by the
artist’s treatment of the reflection in the glass orb. The orb’s reflection functions as a heterotopic
space through its juxtaposition of multiple, seemingly incongruous
realities. On one level, it seems
to occupy the illusionary space within the picture’s setting, as it hangs by a
ribbon from the ceiling rafters.
The orb’s position within this pictorial space is reaffirmed by the
woman’s gaze, which is directed towards it. Yet, this reality is contradicted by the orb’s existence as a
two-dimensional object crafted in paint, a reality that the viewer confirms
through his or her presence in front of the work. A third reality is introduced if we consider the orb’s
reflection. Depicted in the glass
is a reflection of a window in Vermeer’s studio. One of the window’s shutters has been closed, which
eliminates the appearance of a cross formed by the mullions separating the
panes of glass. Had the shutter
been opened to produce the reflection of the cross, the painted orb would
remain true to the conventions of mimetic representation, while simultaneously
acting as a visual symbol adopted from Willem Hesius’ Emblemata to signify the soul’s ability to “comprehend” through
Faith that which transcends the capacities of the human mind.[53] Nevertheless, the deliberate
elimination of the cross places greater emphasis on the fact that the painting
was constructed in the “real” space of the painter’s studio.
However, if Vermeer’s aim was to indicate his
role in crafting the mimetically convincing representation, it is peculiar that
he does not depict himself in the orb’s reflection, as this was a common trope
used by Dutch artists to underscore their skill as masters of pictorial
realism.[54]
Vermeer’s absence is important to the creation of a heterotopic space, as it
eliminates the painting’s affiliation with a particular point in time. Consequently, it is seemingly possible
for viewers to perceive the reflection in the orb as a visual approximation of
the space in which they stand.
However, as Foucault’s theory of heterotopias explains, the viewers’
access to this space is an illusion because they too are excluded from the
orb’s reflection in a manner similar to the effect of the covered mirror in
Metsu’s painting.[55] Furthermore, the one identifiable
object in the orb’s reflection is the window; yet, this feature is absent from
Vermeer’s painting, as it would appear on the wall that is covered by the large
tapestry in the foreground. Its
absence from the picture further emphasizes the incompatibility between the
illusory space of the painting, the “real” space of the painter as he
constructs the image, and the space occupied by the spectator who observes the
work.
The mirrors and reflective elements in the
four aforementioned paintings – Las
Meninas, Wunderkammer, Young Woman at the Virginal Playing with a
Dog, and Allegory of Faith
– all signify how these works function as heterotopic spaces in different
respects. Like Foucault’s literary
application of the concept, which illustrates how heterotopias serve to
“desiccate speech, stop words in their tracks, [and] contest the very
possibility of grammar at its source,”[56]
these “visual heterotopias” problematize the ostensibly straightforward
relation between viewers and mimetic representations. The purpose of subverting this relationship is to underscore
how vision operates to produce knowledge.
As mirrors and reflections show, vision can
be manipulated; the eye can be fooled.
According to the seventeenth-century artist Samuel van Hoogstraten, “A
perfect painting is like a mirror of nature which makes things which do not
actually exist appear to exist, and thus deceives in a permissible,
pleasurable, and praiseworthy manner.”[57] His statement suggests that the
underlying principles by which empirical knowledge is ordered are as tenuous as
the aphasiac’s categorical groupings of coloured wool that Foucault mentions in
the preface to The Order of Things.[58] Yet, new systems of order can be
developed by calling attention to the structural underpinnings of order itself:
this is the objective sought by heterotopias. The function of heterotopias as a means of unveiling ordering
systems is echoed by baroque aesthetics, as revealed by Deleuze’s clever
observation that “the essence of the Baroque entails neither falling into nor
emerging from illusion but rather realizing
something in illusion itself.”[59]
Bibliography
[1] Sigmund Freud,
“The Uncanny,” in Art and Literature.
The Penguin Freud Library vol. 14. (Harmondworth: Penguin, 1990), 363 –
64. Freud claims that linguistic
usage has transformed das Heimliche
(homely, familiar) into its opposite, das
Unheimliche: “this uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but
something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has
become alienated from it only through the process of repression.”
[2] Michel
Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics
16, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 24.
[3] Michel
Foucault, The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),
xvi.
[4] Sigmund Freud,
“The Uncanny,” in Art and Literature.
The Penguin Freud Library vol. 14. (Harmondworth: Penguin, 1990), 356.
[5] Michel
Foucault, The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),
19.
[6] Ibid., 22.
[7] Ibid., xxv.
[8] Sigmund Freud,
“The Uncanny,” in Art and Literature.
The Penguin Freud Library vol. 14. (Harmondworth: Penguin, 1990), 373.
[9] Michel
Foucault, The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),
9.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Roland
Barthes, “The World as Object,” in Critical
Essays, trans. Richard Howard (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1972), 12.
[12] Michel
Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics
16, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 26.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Michel
Foucault, The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),
5.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Michel
Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics
16, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 24.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Joel Snyder, “Las Meninas and the Mirror of the
Prince,” Critical Inquiry 11, no. 4
(June 1985): 558.
[19] Ibid., 559.
[20] Michel
Foucault, The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),
335.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Svetlana
Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art
in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1983), xxv.
[23] Celeste
Brusati, “Natural Artifice and Material Values in Dutch Still Life,” in Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art:
Realism Reconsidered, ed. Wayne Franits (Cambridge, United Kingdom:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 151.
[24] Michel
Foucault, The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),
19.
[25] Pamela Hibbs
Decoteau, Clara Peeters 1594 – c.
1640 and the Development of Still-Life Painting in Northern Europe (Lingen:
Luca Verl, 1992), 24.
[26] Michel
Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics
16, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 26.
[27] Angela
Ndalianis, Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and
Contemporary Entertainment (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England:
The MIT Press, 2004), 172 – 73.
[28] Celeste
Brusati, “Natural Artifice and Material Values in Dutch Still Life,” in Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art:
Realism Reconsidered, ed. Wayne Franits (Cambridge, United Kingdom:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 151.
[29] Norman Bryson,
Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on
Still Life Painting (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1990), 107.
[30] Michel
Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics
16, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 25.
[31] Ibid., 26.
[32] Norman Bryson,
Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on
Still Life Painting (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1990), 107.
[33] Ibid., 116.
[34] Sabine
Melchior-Bonnet, The Mirror: A History,
trans. Katharine H. Jewett (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 28.
[35] Norman Bryson,
Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on
Still Life Painting (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1990), 124.
[36] Walter S.
Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon:
Karel van Mander’s Schilder-Boeck (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1991), 70.
[37] Ibid., 72.
[38] Norman Bryson,
Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on
Still Life Painting (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1990), 117.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Michel
Foucault, The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),
xxii.
[41] Svetlana
Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in
the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983),
xxi.
[42] Celeste
Brusati, “Natural Artifice and Material Values in Dutch Still Life,” in Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art:
Realism Reconsidered, ed. Wayne Franits (Cambridge, United Kingdom:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 153.
[43] Svetlana
Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art
in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1983), 25.
[44] Michel
Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics
16, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 25.
[45] Michel
Foucault, The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),
28.
[46] Gilles
Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the
Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1993). The baroque “fold” is the
notion that fragments of matter, space, and time are linked in a complex series
of interrelations that are continuously defined and redefined, thereby
underscoring the non-linear nature of knowledge production.
[47] Henri
Focillon, The Life of Forms in Art,
trans. Charles Beecher Hogan and George Kubler (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1942), 15.
[48] Svetlana
Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art
in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1983), 169.
[49] Daniel Arasse,
“Vermeer’s Private Allegories,” in Vermeer
Studies, eds. Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1998), 347.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid.
[52] Michel
Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics
16, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 27.
[53] Daniel Arasse,
“Vermeer’s Private Allegories,” in Vermeer
Studies, eds. Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1998), 343.
[54] Ibid., 344.
[55] Michel
Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics
16, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 26.
[56] Michel
Foucault, The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),
xix.
[57] Celeste
Brusati, Artifice and Illusion: The Art
and Writing of Samuel van Hoogstraten (Chicago and London: The University
of Chicago Press, 1995), 159.
[58] Michel
Foucault, The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),
xix – xx. Foucault mentions
that aphasiacs will ceaselessly re-order the groups in which they have placed
the skeins of wool because the relations according to which order is imposed
are always “too wide not to be unstable.”
[59] Gilles
Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the
Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1993), 125.