Reflection in Art: A Subtle Way to Ask “Why” in the Search for “What”

Often times students are encouraged—as interpreters of art—to ask “what” is happening in a piece. Thus a strange thing starts to happen: the “iconic” part or focus of the image remains important but in the search for what is happening as a whole, we are clued into the background details just as much as the main action. In this way artists can sneak themselves (either literally or metaphorically) into a work. By placing themselves in the work the artists subtly can communicate their own interpretations of reflection, iconicity, and signification into the piece in question but this takes more reflection and historization to understand why they are doing it to look back at the epistemology in which they were composing. W.J.T. Mitchell’s Picture Theory, Nick Sousani’s Unflattening, and Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics can all be put in conversation with one another to see how theory can be applied to traditionally fine art as well as draw parallels between art and comics.

The reason “what” is so much easier to ask with artworks is because the what can be tied to time periods. What was happening in history? What do the other artworks produced at the time of the one in question have in common with the piece? These surface level questions aim to classify art into categories for ease of speaking and learning about them. The most obvious example of this is in how art museums are designed. Traditional museums usually have their art collection sorted into “periods” maybe by floor or wing and sometimes even sorted by medium used to make types of art. Others may choose to have exhibitions by one artist, looking at the evolution of their techniques, often including information about the events in history taking place during the artist’s life that may have influenced their stylistic changes. A classic example of the typical art museum structure is the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City.





Yet, it is the museum institutions and galleries that introduce a “theme” and then ask for submissions or bring together different pieces of art for the sake of investigating what type of signification the works are trying to achieve are the spaces that would be more interesting to those interested in image theory such as Mitchell. Two famous examples can be explored: Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez and Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait.

While notable for their inclusion in museum collections the two paintings touch on themes of what it means for an artist to “be in their work” both quite literally in Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez and speculatively in Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait. Even though they are not going to be analyzed in relation to a collection, one can still look at them meta-critically to realize what pictures can “say” about how we understand what is happening in image.

One meta-critical question to ask is: if the artist paints themselves into the painting does that make them “iconic” because they have encapsulated their human experience into a representative pictorial icon? Perhaps Velázquez would be most interested in representing his entire self in the work because of his intentional inclusion of self but van Eyck feels more safety of protecting his identity in the ambiguity of whether the reflection in the image is really him or not. It is fascinating because the artist and other insinuated human experiences can be reflected in an artwork yet completely overlooked if one is trying to analyze the background to figure out “what is happening in the piece” rather than “why were these characters included in the piece”?


Historicizing these two works, they range from the 1400s to the 1600s. This time period is typically classified as the Renaissance, a time of “rebirth” and renewed interest in ideas and technology. In this time artists had a chance to reimagine how they represent themselves in art and reimagine the extent of the role the artist plays in generating and interacting with the work. Focusing on the actual images, the Arnolfini Portrait’s detailed background and more cartoonish looking people may act as a way for anyone to relate to the situation in the artwork. The way both works are situated the focus is not on the actual people themselves but rather on using people to better understand their role in and how human identities navigate the environment. In a way saying that people on their own cannot speak their identity or say their story and we need context to understand their reflection.

Diving into the theory, Mitchell argues for a reevaluation for how we attempt to describe images through theory instead of using word and "linguistic fields of criticism" rather picture the theory (Mitchell 9). Moreover, visual arts are "sign systems" and can communicate a type of discourse even without written words (Mitchel 14). McCloud says comics allow for a combination where "readers [can] mask themselves in a character and safely enter a sensually stimulating world. This is supported by McCloud's dichotomous ideas of the Realm of Concepts and Realm of Sense. Complicating this theory with the idea of reflection and Mitchell's imagetext theory, perhaps the author can become a type of "reader" because the traditional barriers of language do not limit their interaction.

Mitchell and Sousani when in conversation complicate each other. Mitchell says, “The most damaging objection to the imagetext model for the analysis of either texts or images might be that, like the comparative method, it simply rearranges the deck chairs and reiterates existing dominant paradigms of analysis in the disciplines of literature and art history” (Mitchell 99). Yet, Sousani highlights that theorists Etienne Pelaprat and Michael Cole postulate, “It is the imagination that fills in the gaps and links fragments to create stable and single images that make it possible for us to think and to act” (Sousani 90) so this complicates Mitchell’s theory a bit that imagetext highlights dominant paradigms of analysis. Since imagination is important for understanding images, this means that there is more that goes into thinking about an image than just the dominant thought. For example, when I look at Las Meninas I could just see a little girl standing in a dress. But with my imagination and feminist critique I can think about the details that went into the girl choosing her dress and while they are “little ladies in waiting” I can imagine what type of life they live and perhaps goals and desires they might have other than waiting to be married.

Mitchell characterizes the paradox of an image-turn-focus during a time of technological development (Mitchell 15) and if we look back into time into other periods of technological advancement we can find correlation between innovations in technology and innovation in ideas and it makes sense why van Eyck and Velázquez were experimenting with these new ideas. Including themselves in the artwork is a lasting reminder of reflecting their experimentation.