Discourse Analysis before Strange Mirrors: Visuality and (Inter)Discursivity in Painting

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.