Abstract

The bourgeois visual consensus has denied any substantial links between the concrete history of alienated, exploited labor and the realm of culture, for example in Velázquez's painting "Las Meninas." Literary and artistic historians hail Spain in the 1600s for its achievements while political, social, and economic historians speak of its decline. Imagine Lenin staring at "Las Meninas." He sees that it reflects both personal disintegration, decadence, and impotence and social, economic, and political rape. Put Lenin inside the actual picture, and he sees what everyone else has looked at but no one has seen: the abyss between culture and material conditions. Historical materialists need to bridge the gap between infra- and superstructure by developing dialectical images and a vision which puts the vanguard into the servants and the servants into the vanguard: Lenin in "Las Meninas."