Visual Intertextuality:
Sequences and Presuppositions

From Christ and the Saints to Mapplethorpe portraits

Van Eyck and Dürer to Mapplethorpe (Patti) and Mapplethorpe (self-portrait): meeting the gaze of the viewer

Manet to Jeff Wall: Image, Reflection, Status of the Viewer

Viewing and implied Narrative:

• This painting's narrative goes beyond felling a story to representing the image and viewing structure of painting.
• What is the event? We are implicated in the painting since we see ourselves being seen.
• The artist makes an allegory of painting, acknowledging the state of being seen and authorized by supreme viewer (king and queen):
  • I see you seeing me
  • I in you see myself seen
  • I see you seeing yourself being seen
• Las Meninas is a picture about the role of framing, frames in the form of pictures, mirror, doors and windows as formal structures-codes-for represented reality.
• The artist positions himself on the viewer's side of the picture surface he is making and looks through the picture frame of the world - which he then reconstructs on the surface of the picture by means of geometric conventions.
• Picasso treats the study as a formal exercise to be abstracted.
• Manet captures viewing, perception, framing, and reflected gaze in another context.
• Jeff Wall, quotes Manet but puts the camera in the image in the position of the male viewer in the mirror at the bar in Manet