Response to "Visibility"

In the chapter “Visibility” by Italo Calvino he describes the process and the different ways we visualize things in our daily lives and furthermore, how we visualize art. He breaks the process into two ways. The first way is start at a word and then arrive at an imaginative image while the second way is to start at an image and end with a verbal expression.

 I think a really impactful and powerful piece of

art will help you arrive at a verbal expression. It would be an almost pointless work of art if you could not express how you felt or what your thought about the work. Art should guide you to what it is trying to say rather than bombard you with color, emotion or strokes. This will leave the viewer feeling uneasy about rather than a state of satisfaction that he/she has viewed a message.

This being said it is also our responsibility, as the viewer, to be open to the message even if it is opaque. Art is not just something to be admired rather it is to provoke our thought process. Then we may share it with others, for art is a type of performance and there is no performance without an audience.