A.  "Las Meninas" is self-aware in the sense that:

1.  The painter paints himself;

2.  The paints his own act of painting. 

3.   The object of the represented painter's gaze (the subject of his painting) is the invisible authority that makes his painting possible, indeed, that authorizes all activity, including representation, in Spain:   the king and queen of Spain who can be seen in the mirror behind the painter.  

B.  The self-awareness in "Las Meninas" reinforces the code of signs that grounds representation in 17th C. Spain.  It does not put this code of representation into question.

C.  More rigorously, however, one must say that the painting in fact constructs the fiction of a hidden king who stands behind all representations and authorizes them.

D. The philosopher Michel Foucault gives an excellent analysis of "Las Meninas" at the beginning of his text, The Order of Things (Les Mots et les choses).