Reflections on Velasquez's Mirror: Arts Education as Eliciting the Countergaze

In this thesis, I investigate the action of the gaze in dialogue. The gaze is an aspect of dialogue that acts as an undercurrent to surface communication. Through its action, the gaze arranges social spaces by ascribing value onto persons, objects, practices and ideas. For the most part it does so unobserved. The social and interpersonal dynamics that the gaze creates are imbedded in art objects and in the processes of art making. Hence, one of the important tasks of the educator is to elicit the countergaze-a moment of insight when the student recognizes the gaze and its action. Just as Velasquez held a mirror to the king and queen by painting Las Meninas, artists, curators and teachers may also invite moments of insight that have to do with the relational dynamics in a social environment. Perhaps, by holding up the metaphorical mirror, these educators can make the gaze of patrons, visitors and students visible to themselves. Artists, curators and teachers can make contemporary audiences aware of how they, as part of society, ascribe value to persons, things and ideas represented in art and other forms of cultural expression. Art teachers, like artists, may frame situations, events, issues, ideas, and the like, so that persons who gaze are made aware of how they are creating and recreating patterns in social space. Hopefully, with this insight, the social spaces where art is displayed, talked about and created may become places of personal and social transformation.