Visibility

In Italo Calvino's discourse titled Visibility, he discusses Dante and the idea of imagination. All of the topics mentioned are related in ways similar to what we have discussed in class, but it is approached through a different lens. The lens of philosophy. I am not the largest fan of philosophical texts but I do believe it brings perspectives that we may not have seen or realized from reading magazine articles or editorials written by or for artists. Calvino states, "the poet has to imagine visually both what his actor sees and what he thinks he sees, what he dreams, what he remembers, what he sees represented, or what is told to him...". I highlight this short excerpt from the text because I believe it touches into the sensory aspect of art. The idea of interpreting art through someone else's perspective reminds me of a video I saw shared on Facebook showcasing an artist who was blind but would listen to songs and be able to paint the tune that she heard. This is also what we tried to do in class the other day through our dot artwork. I liked the idea of tapping into all the senses of the creative process.

Though Calvino talks about poetry and theater, we know that this is also a form of art. And the time period that Calvino studies in this piece, theater, poetry, and literature were some of the most renowned forms of art. Obviously, things have changed and theater is no longer the main form of entertainment in our society. Now, there is some advertisement, show, movie, or production playing on a screen nearby at all times. Calvino brings up Dante's theatrics to discuss the point of where ideas come from. The quotation presented above gives a brief vignette of what happens between the artist and the interpreter (audience). Calvino mentions how the images that we see on screen were once imagined by the artist or creator.

He likens the phenomena of imagination and verbal expression to that of the chicken and the egg. Do we imagine because of 'fantasies raining down on us from above' or is there some memory of another visual verbal expression that triggers us to take the image further into fantasy?

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