A Study in Foucault s Archaeology as a Practical method for Painting (picture) Analysis

Michel Foucault (1926-1984), French philosopher, is among dominant theoreticians on the relation of visible and sayable. Deleuze, his friend and commentator, describes Foucault’s archaeology as an audiovisual archive because he was fascinated by what he saw as much as by what he read. Foucault’s writings on paintings, and his visual references in his books was first considered as supplements to his well-known ideas. His influence on arts, in theory and practice, flourished in the beginning of 21st century. In fact, his writings on power, modernity and body fascinated the art world more than his dispersed comments on particular works of art (specially paintings). By the way, some art historians and philosophers, investigated his writings on painting to find its theoretical roots or to extract a philosophy of contemporary art. But, besides many other things, what makes his writings on paintings so considerable, is exactly the way he separates visibility from discursivity. His idea on the problematic relation of visible and sayable made him to claim that linguistic methods should not be used in picture analysis. So, by exploring his writings and conferences on paintings, this article, tries to find out the practical method of archaeological picture analysis.
Foucault’s notes on paintings consist a paragraph to a complete book: from occasional references to painters such as Bosch and Breughel in history and civilization (1961), a complete chapter on Velazquez’s las meninas in Order of Things (1966), a conference on Manet (1971), to a complete book on Magritte (1973) and essays on his contemporary French artists. Listing these particular writings on paintings show that his engagement with paintings is somewhat time sequential; from renaissance to his own era. By this time ordered method he tries to see the differences which makes the specialty of each work. He also uses paintings to clarify his other theories, especially on the relation of word and image in different epistemic regimes. In somewhere at the end of Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault introduces painting as a potential case for archaeological analysis. In this way, he suggests that it may be a special discursive practice that is embodied in a painting’s techniques and effects. painting, In Foucault’s archaeological approach, is considered as a form of knowledge, but different from philosophical knowledge or science. So it can be conceived that painting is a part of visible knowledge which should be studied by its special visible character. It doesn’t mean that we can’t say anything about paintings in words. Actually, the archaeology of painting as a method is concerned with the visible materiality of the work (composition, light, space, size…) and the visible condition of its presentation to vision. The way in which a painting may accept or reject established principles is the main point of this method.