First Lecture! BCOP100

On Tuesday 11th October we all had our first lecture in the lecture theatre with Jason. Upon entering the room, we were all greeted with 80s music videos, which introduced us all to the idea of reading into visual stimuli in order to gain knowledge about the context of a piece.

The particular part of the lecture that I found most interesting was when we began analysing the famous painting 'Las Meninas' by Diego Velàzquez (1656). We all started brainstorming what was immediately obvious to us, like who was in the painting, and what was going on. However upon closer inspection, it became evident that Velàzquez himself was depicted in the piece, and was actually positioned in such a place that it looks like he is observing the spectator (us). Furthermore, on the wall, there is an illuminated picture which is in fact a mirror - thus suggesting that the King and Queen of Spain are stood in the same place as we are, and so are too positioned in the gaze of the artist.

Las Manianas, Diego Velàzquez (1656)

Up to this point the painting seems to make perfect sense, this was until we were told that the only painting that Velàzquez ever painted on the scale that is depicted in the piece, is itself 'Las Maninas'. This mind-bending piece of information created a paradox where many people began to feel their brains ache. This means that Velàzqyez painted himself painting the painting, but positioned him doing so in the scene of the painting. This sense of confusion is something that I particularly enjoyed, as it was something that I came across frequently while studying Philosophy & Ethics at A-Level. Therefore to have created a tautology in a piece of art felt oddly familiar, and was something that excited me greatly. I love how a painting, such as Las Meninas can seem relatively mundane and common, but when you really read into the history and the symbolism of the piece, then it becomes so much more captivating.

Throughout the lecture we continued to look into other famous works of art, such as ones by Picasso, who had re-imagined and re-painted Las Meninas 53 times in order to create odd, yet familiar pieces of art. Then we started to analyse the famous photograph of Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface, where we discovered that Niel Armstrong is too in the photograph, as his reflection was captured in the visor or the astronaut. All of these examples backed up the idea that you can endlessly read into any image in order to gather information about the context of the piece.

Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11, 1969)

Our task at the end of the day was to find an image from a book (in groups), and practice the same technique in order to gather contextual information. We chose an illustration by Sir John Tennel, from the book 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' (1866) which be began analysing. The image below shows you what we discovered: