Discourse analysis before strange mirrors: visuality and (inter)discursivity in painting

Abstracts

Este artigo intenciona compreender a dimensão discursiva das pinturas por meio da análise do discurso ancorada em Michel Foucault. Recorta-se a figura do espelho em pinturas canônicas com vistas a observar seu funcionamento discursivo enquanto elemento do enunciado artístico visual. Apresenta três partes: a primeira, que determina o lugar ocupado pelo discurso estético nos trabalhos de Michel Pêcheux e de Michel Foucault; a segunda, que se concentra na análise de três pinturas europeias, a saber, As meninas, de Velásquez; Um bar em Folies-Bergère, de Manet; e As ligações perigosas, de Magritte; e a terceira parte, que discute a intersecção entre visualidade e interdiscursividade a partir (a) das reflexões de M. Foucault acerca do discurso estético e (b) da figura do espelho presente nessas pinturas.

Análise do discurso; Discurso estético; Michel Foucault

ARTICLES

Discourse analysis before strange mirrors: visuality and (inter)discursivity in painting

Renan Mazzola^I; Maria do Rosário Gregolin^II

^IUniversidade Estadual Paulista "Júlio de Mesquita Filho" – UNESP, Araraquara, São Paulo, Brazil; FAPESP; [e-mail] Estadual Paulista "Júlio de Mesquita Filho" – UNESP, Araraquara, São Paulo, Brazil; [e-mail]

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to understand the discursive dimension of some paintings through Michel Foucault's discourse analysis approach. The image of the mirror in several canonical paintings was selected, intending to observe its discursive operation as an element of the visual artistic utterance. Basically, this text has three parts: firstly, it determines the place occupied by the aesthetic discourse in Michel Pêcheux's and Michel Foucault's works; secondly, it focuses on the analysis of three European paintings, namely The Maids of Honour by Velásquez, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Manet, and Dangerous Liaisons by Magritte; thirdly, it discusses the intersection between visuality and interdiscursivity based on a) the contributions of M. Foucault's works on aesthetic discourse and b) the image of the mirror found in those paintings.

Keywords: Discourse Analysis; Aesthetic Discourse; Michel Foucault

Introduction

How can Discourse Analysis approach objects that do not have explicit language registrations, such as the case of paintings? This apparently simple question generates a number of other questions, when an exclusively visual object is confronted with a theoretical and methodological framework of this domain. Some of these questions are: a) To which Discourse Analysis is it referring? b) In theory, is it possible to consider paintings in its discursive materiality? c) Does the object which raises problems for the theory help to develop it? In order to reflect on these questions, the image of mirror, in several paintings, as an element of the visual utterance, responsible for activating memories and mobilizing discourses, was considered.

The reflections presented in this study were based on the French Discourse Analysis perspective, derived from dialogues between Michel Pêcheux - and his group - and Michel Foucault. For our analysis, the work of the elements of visual materiality in the interdiscursive network, which goes through the discursive field (Cf. MAINGUENEAU, 2009, p.23) of art as a condition of its interpretability, will be observed.

Interdiscursivity is considered to be a principle that rules the production of meanings. It is exactly because "'something says' (ça parle) always 'before, elsewhere and independently'"

Thus, to treat visuality in discourses means to observe how the nonverbal materiality acts inside the interdiscourse, mobilizing certain memories and silencing others, constituting certain types of discourse (Cf. MAINGUENEAU, 2009, p. 129), relating "discursive units (which belong to previous discourses of the same genre, of contemporaneous discourses of other genres, etc.) with which a particular discourse enters into implicit or explicit relation"

M. Pêcheux, in his last writings

In relation to the aesthetic discourse

It seems that our project supposes seriously regarding the notion of discursive materiality as the level of socio-historical existence, which is neither language nor literature, not even the "mentalities" of an era, but it refers to the verbal condition for the existence of objects (scientific, aesthetic, ideological objects) in a given historical juncture.

From this point of view, the decision not to a priori restrict the study of textual material of consecrated literary objects seems extremely interesting and positive to me: this decision allows us to interrogate the processes of construction of discursive references throughout its extension, understanding both Alltagssprache (and Alltagsfiktion) and the scientific, technical, political and aesthetic discourses (p.151-152, [emphasis in original])

According to Pêcheux, we need to study other materialities always with respect to political discourses. In general, these last two excerpts previously presented show the possibility of working the discursive materialities implied in aesthetic forms. Still, it seems that M. Pêcheux refers to "verbal conditions of existence," for instance, "the impressionist discourse," as what was said about the impressionist movement, because "it allows us to question the processes of discursive reference construction [which are not the consecrated literary objects, but other textual materials] of aesthetic discourses"

Bourgeois politics came to the fore, producing a new type of relation to the elsewhere and to the nonexistent (the "we," the "all," and the "each one" in the assemblies, revolutionary parties, the new army ... and national language): The feudalism had kept the ruling order, translating it into specific forms (representations, images) designed to the dominated classes. The particularity of bourgeois revolution was to absorb the differences by breaking barriers: It universalized legal relations at the moment that the circulation of money, goods... and free workers was universalized (PÊCHEUX, 1990b, p.10 [emphasis in original])

Before the revolution in 1789, aesthetic discourse served as a tool of the dominant order, governed by religious discourse. Thus, not only were the religious teachings (biblical ones) conveyed through stained glass and paintings to the illiterate population, but these materialities also conveyed the own political order of the societies of which they were part

Aesthetic discourse, as characterized in footnote 8, can be seen as a discursive field from which three positions and three categories of speakers

On this journey of understanding M. Foucault's work regarding the analysis of aesthetic discourse, starting from The Archaeology of Knowledge, we will move to other texts in which artistic utterances are discussed. This choice is justified by the fact that this book is the main reference of Foucault's Discourse Analysis in Brazil (GREGOLIN, 2006). In Part IV, section 6 (Science and Knowledge), subsection "f," named Other Archaeologies, M. Foucault (2011) questions the possibility of conceiving an archaeological analysis that would show the regularity of a knowledge on other domains different from those from epistemological images and from sciences. He mentions a number of possible orientations, such as the analysis of paintings; additionally, Foucault lists the following procedures:

In order to analyze a painting, a painter's latent universe can be reconstructed; one might want to rediscover the murmur of the painter's intentions – which are not, in the last analysis, transcribed into words, but into lines, surfaces and colors –; one might try to highlight the implicit philosophy that, supposedly, shapes the painter's world view. [...] The archaeological analysis would have a different purpose: it would search if the space, the distance, the depth, the color, the light, the proportions, the volumes, the outlines, were not, at the considered time, nominated, stated, conceptualized in a discursive practice; and if the resulting knowledge of this discursive practice was not, perhaps, inserted into theories and speculations, in forms of teaching and recipes, but also in processes, in techniques and almost in the painter's own gesture (p.262).

The regularity of knowledge, according to Foucault's reflections, can also be observed in various manifestations of meaning, in various discursive materialities. The formal elements of a painting (the space, distance, depth, color, light, ratios, volumes, outlines), regarded as part of a discourse practice, can be objects of an archeological analysis, that is, they can be objects – as visual signs of a specific positioning discourse (Cf. MAINGUENEAU, 2009, p.45) – of what is called "aesthetic discourse analysis" here.

The fact that the period in which M. Foucault lived in Tunisia and spoke at conferences on art is emphasized in this study, and this also represented the period in which he wrote The Archaeology of Knowledge, among other works: "In light of this controversy in the spring of 1966, he will take advantage of his stay in Tunisia [...] to present his conception of the archaeological method (which will result in The Archaeology of Knowledge, written in Sidi Bou Saïd in 1967-1968 and published in 1969"

Next, when analyzing three European paintings – The Maids of Honour by Velásquez, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Manet, and Dangerous Liaisons by Magritte –, the image of the mirror in the composition of artistic utterance is particularly observed. The mirror, from the second half of the fifteenth century, was regarded already as an "emblem of painting". More than having the function of mise en abyme, it constituted a symbolic element. Between the Italian renaissance and the Belgian surrealism, through the Spanish baroque and the French impressionism, its function alternates between the reduplication and the distortion of reality. For this study, the image of the mirror was chosen as an element into which, sometimes blending, three natures of discourse converge. They are pointed by Maingueneau (2009) as: (i) positioning discourses in a discursive field (baroque, impressionism, surrealism); (ii) positioning discourses of a category of speaker (the painters Velásquez, Manet, and Magritte); and (iii) the discourse of scientific type, be it of art history (GOMBRICH, 2001) be it of symbology (mirror) in art (CHEVALIER; GHEERBRANT, 1982).

1 The Revealing Reflection in Velásquez

Considerably admired by E. Manet, D. Velásquez (1599-1660) was the principal artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and one of the main representatives of the baroque of his time (GOMBRICH, 2001, p.406). In his works, the issue of representation is placed. That is why one of his paintings is chosen to integrate the front pages of The Order of the Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences, in which Foucault precisely discusses the parameter of representation in the Classical Age. For Gombrich (2001, p.408-410):

In fact, the beauty of Velásquez's mature works is established in such a way in the effect of the brushstroke and in the delicate harmony of colors that illustrations give only a faint idea of the originals. [...] Because of the effects of this order, the impressionist painters admired Velasquez more than any other old master

His most contemplated painting in Museo del Prado in Madrid is, undoubtedly, The Maids of Honour, produced in 1656. In the infinity of details of the framework, which are presented from the smallest brushstroke of the dress of the infanta up to the complex play of looks between the characters of the composition, the mirror plays a crucial role in the construction of meaning effects.

In the beautiful analysis performed by Foucault (2006a) of this Velásquez's painting, the mirror was not obviously unnoticed. A number of excerpts to which the mirror is particularly referred are listed below:

(a) But here it is that, from among all these suspended canvases, one shines with a singular brightness (p. 198)

[...]

(b) Among all these elements designed to provide representations, but which contest them, hide them, conceal them because of their position or their distance, that one is the only one that works, with all honesty, and it shows what must show (p. 199).

[...]

(c) Instead of rotating around the visible objects, this mirror crosses the entire field of representation, neglecting what he could capture there, and restores visibility to what remains outside any look (p. 200).

[...]

(d) The mirror, showing, beyond the walls of the studio, what happens in front of the painting, makes, in its sagittal dimension, the interior and exterior oscillate (p. 203)

The mirror provides the answers that the viewer demands: At whom do the painter and the princess look? Who is the painting model? What is being painted on the canvas which is before Velásquez in the composition? Moreover, it reflects what lies outside the margins of the painting – the royal couple, Philip IV and his wife, Marianna. They occupy the "symbolic center" of the picture, to which the child's look and the image in the mirror are finally submitted. The area reflected by the mirror, outside the margins of the composition, may be occupied by many individuals in order to become the subject that observes.

This center is symbolically sovereign in this context, because it is occupied by King Philippe IV and his wife. But above all, it is also sovereign because of the triple function it has in relation to the painting. In this painting, the look of the model at the time it is painted, the look of the viewer who contemplates the scene and the look of the painter when he composes his painting (not the painting which is represented, but the one which is before us and about which we talk) are exactly overlapped. These three "beholding" functions get confused at a point outside the painting, but perfectly real, since, from this point, the representation becomes possible as a model, as a spectacle and as a painting (FOUCAULT, 2006a, p.207-208)

Overall, Velásquez's painting is classified as a "representation of the representation," a "painting of the painting" (Foucault, 2006a). It illustrates a scene of genre to which the painter is accustomed, that is, the production of a real portrait in one chamber of the Royal Alcázar of Madrid. The plane mirror represented by Velásquez in the seventeenth century differs from many convex mirrors presented in the paintings from the fifteenth century

As an element of artistic utterance, the mirror takes part of the complex play of the characters' looks in the picture; it makes the painting model explicit and highlights the relation between reality and illusion. In Foucault's words (2006a, p.209), therefore, "the representation can be given as pure representation"

2 The Unsettling Reflection in Manet

The pictorial revolution that occurred in France in the nineteenth century had three phases: romanticism, represented by E. Delacroix (1798-1863); realism, represented by G. Courbet (1819-1877), and Impressionism, determined by E. Manet (1832-1883). Manet and his group tried to deconstruct what, in art, was just convention. Thus, they performed artistic experiences considered extravagant by their contemporaries. Exposing models and objects in the sun, for example, they found violent oppositions of light and shadow, different from those perceived inside the studio, represented in the paintings by gradient. According to Gombrich (2001, p.514), "you can also say that Manet and his group were the instigators of a revolution in the treatment of colors almost comparable to the revolution brought by the Greeks in the treatment of forms"

Comparatively, from all periods in which he conducted studies in painting (FOUCAULT, 2002, 2004, 2006a), the one in which he was in Tunisia was particularly productive.

To Foucault's sojourn in Tunisia, from between September of 1966 and the summer of 1968, it is necessary to add his visits to Tunis in September of 1968 and May of 1971. A public conference on Manet, carried out at the Cultural Club Tahar Haddad, on May 20, 1971, constitutes, it may be said nowadays, the reason for this interest in the period in which Foucault was in Tunisia, which was also probably the one when he conducted a number of studies of pictorial works in the form of courses (TRIKI, 2004, p.51)

The more one researches this moment of Foucault's intellectual production in Africa, the more the hypothesis that the domains of science and of epistemology were not the only ones to be seen by an archaeology of knowledge is confirmed. The term "aesthetic discourse analysis" is not arbitrary, but binds tightly to what Foucault himself stated in excerpts from Other archaeologies.

The aesthetic discourse in question will be prudently proposed at the end of The Archaeology of Knowledge, in a long paragraph within a section entitled "Other archaeologies," which deals with ethics and politics, and raises the question of knowledge that would not necessarily settle under epistemological terms. In this passage, Foucault proposes to extract the wordless "say" of the painting, that is, the discursive dimension, the positivity of a knowledge that goes through it, which would be the fact of what today we call science of the art or poiétique, but which, above all, reminds us of the exemplary period of the Italian Renaissance, in which scientific theories and theoretical practices of humanist painters accompanied the establishment of the new pictorial representation (TRIKI, 2004, p.59)

Therefore, understanding the visuality through French Discourse Analysis means observing how the nonverbal materiality mobilizes certain regions of interdiscursivity, putting into play the discursive heterogeneity, the pre-constructed discourse and its own discursive formation. By proceeding thus, it is possible to achieve the (inter)discursive dimension which constitutes the paintings, which makes the art speak even without words, which places the objects in the interpretable territory, localizable in time and in space. According to Foucault (2011, p.263), "the archaeological analysis would have a different purpose: It would search if space, distance, depth, color [...] were not, at the considered time, named, stated, conceptualized in a discursive practice"

At the conference on E. Manet

This study intends to approach neither the three headings listed by Foucault regarding Manet, nor some of the most prestigious characteristics of these paintings. Only the last one will be dealt with: The place of the viewer. To address this issue, Foucault analyzes one of the most famous paintings of Manet:

This canvas is a combination of portrait, still life, and scene of genre. Here, the mirror is the element of the visual utterance that most contributes to the effect of "strangeness"

i. The reflection of the woman. In order to make the reflection be seen where it is, it would be necessary that the painter and the viewer be positioned on the far left side of the picture, according to optics principles. There, where the painter is, a reflection would be generated just behind the woman's body, because the mirror is not placed in an oblique position. According to Foucault (2009, p.76), "The painter therefore occupies – and the viewer is therefore invited to occupy after him – successively or rather simultaneously two incompatible places: one here and the other one there"

ii. The man's picture. In the reflection of the mirror, there is a man who talks to the attendant. On the mirror reflection, he is well positioned near the counter and the woman's face, on which there should be some sort of shadow. But there is nothing. "There is nothing: the lighting comes full shot, striking without any obstacle or cover whatsoever the whole woman's body and the marble [...]"(FOUCAULT, 2009, p.76)

iii. The play of looks. Among the characters in the picture, painter and viewer, there is a play of looks. On the mirror reflection, the man who talks to the attendant is much taller than she is. Thus, she should look up, if she were talking to him. She, however, looks down. If the position occupied by the man was actually of the painter, the woman would be observed from above, but both the painter and the viewer observe the servant at the same level as hers, or even further down.

The mirror is the place in which these three systems of incompatibility can be observed: (i) the ambiguous and simultaneous position of both the painter and the viewer; (ii) the presence and the absence of the character who has a conversation with the attendant, influencing the play of light; (iii) the downward look of the speaker with the attendant and the upward look into the represented scene. This structure of the scene contrasts with that of the school of Italian renaissance. In renaissance paintings, the viewer had a fixed position to be occupied, so that the whole represented scene could be contemplated. In Manet's painting

3 The Radioscopic Reflection in Magritte

An important member of a group of artists called "surrealists," R. Magritte (1898-1967) conveys, in his works, the fantastic and oneiric universe. According to Gombrich (2001, p.590), "He understood, however, that what he does is not copying reality, but above all is creating a new reality, as we do in our dreams, even if we do not know how we came to that"

In his essay on R. Magritte's painting, first published in Les cahiers du chemin in 1968, Foucault (2002) particularly focuses on the painting Ceci n'est pas une pipe, whose first version dates from 1926. Devoted to a series of this Belgian artist's paintings, the text allows the observation of how the verbal and nonverbal elements (which results in a verbal-visual object) work in the construction of the surrealist discourse. Undoubtedly, this Foucault's text is the one which more explicitly approaches the verbal-visuality in painting, since it deals with the relations between the two discursive materialities: "and, in return, the visible form is dug by writing, ploughed by the words that, from the inside, act on it, and conjuring the steadfast, ambiguous and unnamed presence, they bring out the network of meanings that baptize it, determine it, fasten it in the universe of discourses"

In this painting, the mirror held by the woman

The mirror works somewhat in the way of a radioscopic painting, but with a whole set of differences. [...] The image is noticeably smaller than the woman herself, thus indicating, between the mirror and what it reflects, a certain distance that the attitude of the woman refutes, or that is refuted by her, tightening the mirror against her own body to hide it best (FOUCAULT, 2002, p. 70-71)

The shadow in this R. Magritte's painting is also observed, presenting an interesting behavior. A woman's body is between a grey wall and the heavy mirror. The shadow reveals that the distance is minimal. As noted by Foucault (2002, p.71), "this projected shadow lacks a form, the one related to the left hand which holds the mirror; normally, it should be seen at the right side of the painting [...]"

Final Words: Between Visuality and Interdiscursivity

Three painters. Three schools. Three discourses. In this hall of mirrors, in which the reflections are nothing more than ink on canvas and wood, we tried to capture the interdiscursive dimension of pictorial utterances, the wordless discourse of strokes, of colors, of surfaces, of tints.

In Velásquez's work, the mirror is configured as a visual element that repeatedly brings the viewer into and out of the painting. To some extent, its operation is opposed to that of the Renaissance school, whose principle is to make the object-painting invisible, regarding it as a window that is opened for a given scene. This space reflected by the mirror, besides having been occupied by the painter (at the time of the painting creation), can be occupied both by the model painted by Velásquez (on the canvas represented on her back, in composition) and by the viewer. There is a space of continuous alternation.

In Manet's work, the mirror calls the place occupied by the characters of the painting, besides the painter's place and the viewer's place into question. The viewer attempts to move in order to find a position that is consistent with the reflection being observed, and, in turn, tries to define the position occupied by the painter in the play of looks and reflections found in A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. At the Conference on Manet, numerous references to the scenic structure of the Renaissance were found: "the painter's and the viewer's panoptical place, the internal system of lighting, the establishment of relations between the characters due to their spatial distribution and their look"

In Magritte, the mirror paradoxically reveals the body parts, which should be hidden by it. The reflective face of the mirror exposes what the opaque face hides. It works in accordance with a strange transparency, which returns the image of the body at different angles. Still, the mirror is a place of exposure.

In all three cases, regularities and differences were observed. In each one of them, the visual element of the mirror reaffirms the imagetic utterance, the positioning discourse (Cf. MAINGUENEAU, 2009, p.45) of their art school: In Velásquez's case, the mirror introduces the problem of representation; in Manet's case, the mirror is a symbol of distortion; in Magritte's case, it reveals the oneiric and fantastic dimension of the surrealist discourse.

The principle governing the operation of reflexes is heterotopic, since they behave as

[...] types of utopias effectively carried out, in which the real positions [...] are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted, types of places that are outside of all places, although they are actually localizable (FOUCAULT, 2006b, p.415)

In this same essay, Of Other Spaces, Foucault attributes the status of mixed experience between utopias and heterotopias to the mirror. It is a utopia, because its reflection is an unreal space that is virtually opened, and a heterotopia, because it makes the place occupied in front of the mirror real (with respect to the space that it surrounds) and unrealistic (with respect to the fact that, to be perceived, the image passes through the faraway virtual point) at the same time.

Of the six principles listed by Foucault, which are responsible for ruling the operation of heterotopias, the mirror, in art, is very close to the third principle: "In a single real place, the heterotopia has the power to juxtapose several spaces, several positions that are themselves incompatible"

When painting is approached through Discourse Analysis as well as in syncretic texts, the interdiscourse is responsible for the production of meanings and interpretations. In the discursive field of art, for example, the mirror mobilizes an entire memory derived from discourses of scientific type which focus on symbology:

Speculum (mirror) originated speculation: in its origin, speculating meant observing the sky and the movements of the stars with the help of a mirror. Sidus (star) equally originated consideration, which etymologically means watching all the stars. These two abstract words, which describe today's highly intellectual operations, are rooted in the study of the celestial bodies reflected in mirrors. From this, it derives that the mirror, while reflecting surface, is supported by an extremely rich symbolism in the order of knowledge [...]. These reflections of intelligence or of the celestial terms make the mirror appear as the symbol of the manifestation that reflects the creative Intelligence (CHEVALIER; GHEERBRANT, 1982, p.635-636, [emphasis in original])

In these three analyzed paintings, two discourses that go through the discursive field of art are easily recognized, acting at the level of interdiscourse: a) the discourse of physics, which refers to the operation of mirrors, reflections, images; b) the discourse of the symbols, which rescues the symbology of the mirror in the field of literature, mythology, plastic arts, practices.

In short, to consider the visual materiality of paintings and its role in interdiscourse means to undo the node of discourses that are entangled in the production of artistic utterances and to highlight discursive heterogeneity, discourse pre-construction, and the relations among discursive formations. On the other hand, analyzing the aesthetic discourse based on M. Foucault's work, specifically at the intersection of the archaeological method with the pictorial materiality, has been very productive. As stated by Foucault (2011, p.263), "it would be necessary to show that, in at least one of its dimensions, it [the painting] is a discursive practice that is embodied in techniques and effects"

REFERENCES

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• CHEVALIER, J.; GHEERBRANT, A. Dictionnaire des symboles: mythes, rêves, coutumes, gestes, formes, figures, couleurs, nombres. Paris: Robert Laffont/Jupiter, 1982.
• COURTINE, J.-J. Metamorfoses do discurso político: derivas da fala pública. Trad. Nilton Milanez e Carlos Piovezani Filho. São Carlos: Claraluz, 2006.
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• FOUCAULT, M. Isto não é um cachimbo Trad. J. Coli. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2002.
• FOUCAULT, M. La peinture de Manet Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2004.
• FOUCAULT, M. As damas de companhia. In: MOTTA, M. B. (Org.). Michel Foucault - Estética: literatura e pintura, música e cinema. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária, 2006a. p.194-209. [Ditos & Escritos, v III]
• FOUCAULT, M. Outros espaços. In: MOTTA, M. B. (Org.). Michel Foucault - Estética: literatura e pintura, música e cinema. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária, 2006b. p.411-422. [Ditos & Escritos, v III]
• FOUCAULT, M. A arqueologia do saber Trad. Luiz Felipe B. Neves. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária, 2007.
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¹

(PÊCHEUX, 2009, p.149) that texts and images make sense to us. By placing discourse and interdiscourse in evidence, the primacy of the latter over the former is observed; this hierarchy is often the main thesis of the French school, mainly in M. Pecheux's reflections (2009). For this reason, it is more appropriate to refer to interdiscursivity than to discursivity, since the latter implies the former. When considering the discursive formations (Cf. PÊCHEUX, 2009, p.147) which are interrelated in the discursive field of art, more particularly in the discursive subfield of paintings, how the techniques and effects are named in each one will be observed. According to Maingueneau (2009, p.78), "[...] the identity of a discourse is inseparable from its emergence and (from) its maintenance through interdiscourse"

²

.

³

(MAINGUENEAU, 2009, p.77).

⁴

, had already alerted to the transformations of political discourse, without, however, lingering over the spread of mass communication technologies and future consequences of its popularization to the perception of the public man. Although this author was aware of the changing of discourses regarding the emerging media, these notes appear in the form of brief mention, and the absence of a further deepening prevents these passages to have full anchoring of statements.

⁵

, however, M. Pêcheux mentions this kind of discourse, often found in M. Foucault's works. In Pêcheux's texts of the 1980s, we can observe some changes in the main object of Discourse Analysis: the political discourse. Furthermore, from the developments fostered by J. J. Courtine - and through Pêcheux's own indications, some elements which were not considered before (such as voice, intonation, gestures, and their radio and television transmission), started to be understood as characteristics of the utterance, as traces of it, producing (effects of) sense

⁶

. Nevertheless, the object of analysis of M. Pêcheux remains the party-political discourse. However, Discourse Analysis is not hindered from working on various discursive materialities, "[...] implied in ideological rituals, in philosophical discourses, in political utterances, in cultural and aesthetic forms, through their everyday relations with everyday situation, with the ordinary of the sense"

⁷

(PÊCHEUX, 2002, p.49). In an article published in 1984, originally in German, Pêcheux (2012)

⁸

states that:

⁹

.

¹⁰

(PÊCHEUX, 2012). This passage reveals the complexity of M. Pêcheux's thought, which either anchors the aesthetic forms to political-ideological discourse or redirects the aesthetic forms as domains which determine the field of Discourse Analysis, without making these very relations with the political-ideological domain explicit, but interpreting them as correlated:

¹¹

.

¹²

. In this case, aesthetic discourse was subordinated to religious discourse, governed by the dominant ideology, derived from the Church. The art, in this perspective, was pervaded by domination strategies.

¹³

were selected for the analysis. In 1969, in France, two major theories of discourse were formulated: M. Pecheux's theory and M. Foucault's theory. These two authors

¹⁴

were contemporaries and dialogued with each other, even if their theories of discourse were not identical. There are important points of contact, which help rethink their discursive theory.

¹⁵

¹⁶

(TRIKI, 2004, p.52). These works (on the archeology of science, on the one hand and on art, on the other hand) were not totally independent; they were inter-related. This interrelation allows us to see the discursive dimension of paintings and take them as utterances composed of nonverbal elements which determine them, which make them belong to certain discursive formations, which make them compose the aesthetic archive of an era.

¹⁷

.

¹⁸

.

¹⁹

.

²⁰

. The reflex of the king and the queen in the mirror is inaccurate, fluid; this technique is also found in

Rokeby Venus (

Venus at her Mirror) – which separates the painter from realism.

²¹

.

²²

.

²³

.

²⁴

.

²⁵

.

²⁶

, conducted in Tunisia, M. Foucault (2004) analyzed 13 paintings by this French painter, grouped under three headings: a) the space of the canvas; b) lighting; and c) the place of the viewer. Highlighting these three aspects found in French painting of the nineteenth century, Foucault gradually demonstrated the modernity presented in Manet's paintings and the influence, which will be noticed later, on painters from the following generations. Each Manet's painting constitutes a "modernist utterance"

²⁷

; all these utterances partially contribute to assign a unit to the discourse of the impressionist school in France in the nineteenth century. The brushstroke, the first ability of the

maîtres de la touche, is one of the visual elements that mobilize the memory of techniques from previous schools, placing two historical and artistic moments in a field of relations. The enunciative identity reflected in the positioning discourse (Cf. MAINGUENEAU, 2009, p.100) of French impressionism is largely constructed from the break with the previous schools on: According to Gombrich (2001, p.514), "[...] Manet abandoned the traditional method of gradient shadows to cling to ruder and more energetic contrasts, which generated a wave of protests among academic artists."

²⁸

These protests gave him a place in the hall of the refused ones

²⁹

.

³⁰

felt by the viewer. Among many other elements in the composition –which would require a lot of pages to exhaustively explore them– the mirror acts as a node of meaning into which other visual elements converge at the moment of interpreting this painting. The mirror covers much of the surface of the painting, and the discomfort it causes is due to three factors:

³¹

.

³²

.

³³

, viewers are invited to move around the painting in order to find the position that is accorded to them. However, this position does not exist... it is a mixed position, here and there, simultaneously.

³⁴

.

³⁵

(FOUCAULT, 2002, p.23). In some R. Magritte's works, the mirror is placed in evidence, giving it a certain function, according to its positioning discourse.

³⁶

is used to hide the naked body. However, it is reflected by this mirror. Paradoxically, what is used to hide does just the opposite. Although it reflects only what it hides, the reflection of the mirror reveals an angle of the woman's body that is not accessible from the position where the viewer is. To some extent, there is certain "representation in abyss" because: a) the woman makes a gesture of hiding, using the mirror; b) the mirror reveals what the woman hides: the part of the body from shoulders to the height of the thighs; c) the gesture of the woman's body in the reflection is the one of someone who hides oneself. It's a play of hiding and revealing, in which what comes first is not known.

³⁷

.

³⁸

. Both the reflection of the mirror and the outline of the shadow on the wall are not consistent with the behavior of these elements in reality; however, these are the elements of the imagetic utterance that insert it in the artistic discourse and make it interpretable as a manifestation of the surrealist school since the operation of these elements in the composition reveals the determinant oneiric dimension of Magritte's work. Gombrich (2001, p.590) states that "[...] many of his oneiric images, painted with meticulous precision and exposed with enigmatic titles, are memorable precisely because they are inexplicable"

³⁹

.

⁴⁰

(TRIKI, 2004 p.57). Many elements in this Manet's painting dialogue with the visual aesthetics of the Renaissance. The viewer's movement observed in the nineteenth century contrasts with the fixed place which was suggested to this viewer in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The mirror, here, produces a

place of displacements.

⁴¹

.

⁴²

(FOUCAULT, 2006b, p.418). In Valásquez's painting, there is juxtaposition of the space of the king and the viewers in the symbolic center of the painting. In Manet's painting, there is juxtaposition of spaces between the man and the attendant, of the spaces of the painter and the viewer, etc. In Magritte's painting, there is juxtaposition of spaces in the front and the back of the body, of the space that is seen and that is hidden.

⁴³

.

⁴⁴

. Analyzing paintings according to their own discursive materiality, characterized by the absence of explicit language registrations, under the French Discourse Analysis perspective, also leads to the encounter of the verb in the interdiscursive dimension, which goes through the materialities and rules the production of meaning in society. In this study, objects that require certain theoretical movements for their understanding were analyzed. Via Foucault (2002, 2004, 2006a) and inspired by Courtine (2006, p.27, [emphasis in original]), some possible ways were rehearsed: "It is necessary to question other utterances besides political utterances [...]; it is necessary to find

texts that disturb"

⁴⁵

.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  17 Dec 2013
• Date of issue
  Dec 2013

History

• Received
  12 Mar 2013
• Accepted
  06 Sept 2013