Mitchell, Intertextuality, and Heteroglossia

Mitchell originally sets out to propose that if metalanguage is plausible, so too is a theory based upon metapictures. It's basically stated that pictures, in fact, provide their own metalanguage and that is precisely how they become self-referential. The first examples of this (formal self-reference and generic self-reference) are mostly centered around the picture itself; the examples either reference the individual picture or the state of being a picture as a class. Although the pictures are self-referential, they immediately come into to dialogue with spectator interpretations. In order to be a metapicture at all, according to Mitchell, requires a dialectical relationship between two or more different, opposing readings of the picture. This immediately cued me to the fact of its intertextuality. The reading of the Egyptian picture could be a laugh at the Egyptians for representing only what their conventions allowed them to represent (i.e. not allowing them to "see" what was really there to be represented), or it could be a laugh at modern ideas that Egyptian figure drawing was more primitive (because it showed them engaging in modern techniques of figure drawing). Either way, the metapicture depends upon these two readings in order to be a metapicture but those two readings depend upon the intertextuality of the picture (i.e. the play of the modern spectator, modern figure drawing techniques, known facts about the Egyptians, etc.).
 
The picture would mean nothing without its alternate readings, but those readings would not come into being without understanding each allusion and genre (Egyptian flat drawings vs. Greco-Roman realistic drawing) at play within the picture. Not only that, but there is an "intertextual" relationship between the author of the picture, the message of the picture, and the contemporary discussions of the issues represented in the picture. "Metapictures are movable, cultural apparatus." They find space for themselves in any number of high or low discussions on any number of topics. They are intertextual by nature almost as much as they are defined by being self-referential.They require this intertextuality to the point that, without discussion on the fact, they would not be considered metapictures at all. This is more than implied when Mitchell writes, "If Wittgenstein had not written abou the Duck-Rabbit, it would scarcely be remembered, and it would not qualify as a metapicture... If Foucault had not written about Las Meninas... it too would not be a metapicture" (60).

The third example of a metapicture, discursive/contextual self-reference, and the example of Las Meninas were definitely intertextual in nature but they were something else as well. The discursive/contextual self-referencing metapicture as exemplified by the Duck-Rabbit is a way of drawing the viewer into the piece and making the viewer become active in its self-reference. Las Meninas took that a huge step further. The viewers viewing Las Meninas could lose themselves and for good reason; they are spontaneously placed in the regular viewing angle ("I am just a spectator looking at a painting not for or about me particularly"), the viewing angle of Valazquez ("I am painting a picture of myself painting this picture"), and the viewing angle as the subject ("I am being directly viewed and painted by Valazquez in real-time"). In this way there are multiple different voices appearing in the same painting, and there is a layered sense of authorship (Heteroglossia).

I believe the metapicture as metalanguage is definitely a good way to look at metapictures because they do seem to also employ many different aspects of metalanguage like intertextuality and heteroglossia.