Homage, Emulation, Reproduction: retranslation and the visual arts

Just as translation can be, and often is, compared to a musical performance, with one original score and innumerable possible renditions, so a number of parallels can be drawn between (re)translation and the visual arts. This paper argues that ‘copies’ or (re)translations must be viewed as cultural products in their own right and analyzes the way in which they can be used to enrich the debate on the concept of artistic expression and interpretation. The text under examination is Velázquez’ 1656 masterpiece Las Meninas and its ‘translations’ primarily by Picasso, three-hundred years later, into 57 different versions all tellingly bearing the same title as the original and Richard Hamilton’s subsequent 1973 etching Picasso’s Meninas. All these texts and their paratextual elements are investigated through the prism of translation theory with references to concepts of authorship, imitation, manipulation and ideology.