El Árbol de la Vida

[Ilus.: Salvador Dali, Las Meninas (detalhe), 1960]

" The painter is standing a little back from his canvas. He is glancing at his model... He is staring at a point to which, even though it is invisible, we, the spectators, can easily assign an object, since it is we, ourselves, who are at that point... The spectacle he is observing is thus doubly invisible: first, because it is not represented within the space of the painting, and, second, because it is situated precisely in that blind point, in that essential hiding-place into which our gaze disappears from ourselves at the moment of our actual looking... In appearance, this locus in a simple one: a matter of pure reciprocity: we are looking at a picture in which the painter is in turn looking out at us... And yet... the painter is turning his eyes towards us only insofar as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject. We, the spectators, are an additional factor. Though greeted by that gaze, we are also dismissed by it, replaced by that which was always there before we were: the model itself... The great canvas with its back to us on the extreme left of the picture... prevents the relation of these gazes ever being discoverable or definitely established... Because we can see only that reverse side, we do not know who we are, or what we are doing. Seen or seeing?... We are observing ourselves being observed by the painter, and made visible to his eyes by the same light that enables us to see him..."
(in Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, 1970)