Picazquez or Who is the Author of Las Meninas

Abstract

Pablo Picasso has been the author of a very interesting procedure from the semiotic point of view. In fact, he has done a series of paintings inspired by Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas. It is not only about the case of quotes: Picasso “rereads” the master’s work inaugurating a way of undertaking art criticism through art itself. From the semiotic point of view, it concerns the verification that nonverbal languages can reveal to us the descriptive “meta-semiotics”.

In this case, it is possible to note that such an operation is possible through a particular semiotic mechanism: retaking a “semi-symbolic” strategy. The author considers Las Meninas (or rather the unique text), instead of painting as a language and articulates it in categories and from there proceeds with coherence to produce the meta-text, which makes Picasso a true semiologist, albeit in an unconscious way.