One Moment in Time Expanded

Every picture tells a story, and the one hinted at by Diego Velázquez’s famed 1656 painting Las Meninas is among the most provocative. Rather than pose his subjects with the pomp and pageantry expected in royal portraits, the artist depicts a relatively candid scene from the royal household at Alcázar. The painting feels like a causal snapshot that was taken 400 years ago and that happens to include the family of Phillip IV of Spain.

The Infanta Dona Margarita is accompanied by two ladies in waiting, Isabel Velasco and Agustina Sarmiento. The dwarf Maria Barbola stands by another dwarf, a boy, who rubs a giant mastiff with his foot. The duenna, Marcela de Ulloa, and an unknown man converse in the background. In a doorway to the rear, we see the queen’s quartermaster pausing on the steps, turning to look at the scene. A mirror hanging on the back wall of the room reflects the infanta’s parents, King Philip IV and Queen Mariana of Austria.

If anybody looks out of place in this slice-of-life scene, it is the artist. Velázquez has painted himself standing at his easel next to the infanta and looking out at the viewer, who sees the back of the canvas he is painting. We don’t quite know who or what Velázquez is painting—is it the king and queen, who we see reflected in the mirror? In the logic of the painting’s composition, the king and queen reflected on the far wall would be standing in the same location as the viewer, and in this way, Velázquez draws the viewer into his painting.

Artist Eve Sussman became fascinated with Las Meninas on a trip to the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid. In her video work at Rice Gallery, 89 Seconds at Alcázar, Sussman turns the painting into a kind of tableaux vivant. But she doesn’t just recreate the painting with costumed actors. The room is filled with royal family, servants, and hangers on, and it reeks of palace intrigue—there are muttered conversations, devious and malign expressions, and body language that speaks of manipulation and dangerous liaisons. Sussman, too, draws the viewer into her work as she imagines the moments just before and after the painting.

Sussman conjures a behind-the-scenes tour for her viewers. Her team built the set for the video in a Brooklyn garage and shot it over a period of four days. She cast actors for the roles of the painting’s subjects, hired a choreographer to design their movements, and employed a costume designer to re-create their 17th-century clothing. The production values rival a studio motion picture, but the result is something quite different.

Sussman’s work was a standout at the 2004 Whitney Biennial. The 12-minute loop was shot in high definition digital video using a Steadicam. The camera moves slowly but agilely through the scene, offering a butterfly’s view—sometimes homing in on faces and sometimes on minute details like the fabric of a sleeve.

The dwarf Maria, played by a man, leans forward to tend the glow of an audibly crackling fire. Figures move and whisper to each other, their words just short of intelligible. The audio is haunting; the rustling of skirts is cut with the sound of a human heartbeat. The surround sound of the gallery and the lushness of the high definition video envelop and absorb the viewer.

Slowly the characters mingle and move about the studio, finally taking their places at the dramatic climax, when they coalesce into a freeze-frame that matches Velázquez’s painting: the infanta looks up to see her parents, Velázquez looks out from his canvas, the boy scratches the dog, the quartermaster pauses on the stairs, the king and queen are visible in the mirror.

For a moment, everything is just like the painting, then inevitably, the figures move on and the camera continues to follow as the players disperse. But through clever camerawork and editing, the scene shifts back to Maria bending over the fire, and it all starts again as the video loops, endlessly trapping the figures in the brief minutes surrounding the painting’s scene.

89 Seconds is riveting—not because of the specific events portrayed but because of the mystery and rich sense of place Sussman evokes. We sense undercurrents of emotion that run through the palace and between these characters—but we only sense it. Nothing is spelled out; everything is ambiguous, providing rich fodder for the viewer’s imagination. Velázquez would, no-doubt, appreciate it.

—Kelly Klaasmeyer