Third Letter: On the Fragility of Visibility and the Image of Existence

The idea that the visible is always doomed to disappear may be one of the fundamental paradoxes of art. Does creating an image condemn it to vanish, or does it merely delay its inevitable dissolution? Velázquez’s Portrait of Aesop or David’s Madame de Sorcy de Thélusson do not merely depict faces; they carry the uncertainty behind them, the way the visible transforms into a space of disappearance. The eyes, the lips, the book in hand—each is revealed through light, yet they gain meaning because of the shadows that frame them. Too much clarity weakens a painting, because light is not an object but a relationship.

Throughout art history, the visible has functioned as both a language that affirms existence and a memory that resists erasure over time. From the first cave painters leaving their handprints on stone walls to Brancusi’s highly polished surfaces that oscillate between presence and absence, the fundamental effort of the artist has not merely been to depict something but to question what it means to make something visible.

Yet, in today’s world of hyper-images, symbols multiply rapidly, but visibility itself becomes more fragile. In the technological age, an image is not defined by its reality but by its ability to be constantly replaced. A visual does not exist because of what it shows, but because of its endless cycle of renewal. In this way, the necessity that once defined art—the urgency of presence—has vanished. Images are no longer bound to bodies, nor to the physical world. The disembodied faces of television anchors, the sterile imagery of consumer culture, seem designed to erase what art has long preserved: the traces of existence.

And yet, art has always been about necessity. As Shitao wrote, “The brush exists to rescue objects from chaos.” This rescue is not merely about representation; it is about understanding, about creating a confrontation. Cézanne returning to Mont Sainte-Victoire, Morandi allowing objects to linger in silence, Soutine layering paint as if battling for visibility—these are not acts of mere depiction, but of engaging in an ever-changing, never-completed relationship with existence.

Barceló’s sculptures for the blind remind us that art is not only understood through sight but through touch. If a sculpture is completed only when a hand feels its surface, could a painting also require the gaze to make it whole? If touch can create light, is an artist’s role truly to see, or to intensify what is already struggling to be seen?

The handprints of prehistoric hunters, the figures of animals painted on cave walls—these are not just signs of presence but records of encounters. Art is not merely a representation; it is an imprint, a meeting, a moment of disappearance. A brushstroke, a shadow, an erasure—these do not simply create an image but place it on the threshold between visibility and absence.

Thinking about the nature of the visible, one question remains: Does art confirm what we see, or does it remind us that the visible is always vanishing?