Visibility

Italo Calvino’s article, Visibility, proposes a very interesting concept of how we visualize things. The first type of imaginative process starts with the word and ends with the visual image. The second type of imaginative process begins with the visual imagine and concludes with the verbal expression. It is easy to say that this is true but when I sat down and truly thought about it, I believe that both of these thought processes can happen simultaneously.

As a writer, I constantly have words, images, and concepts flowing through by brain at all times of the day. Sometimes I will see a single image of a scene or I’ll see phrases and words that I find interesting. But I have also experienced the processes that Calvino describes in his article. There have been times when I only see an image and then create a story revolving around that image, letting the words fall into place naturally. Or, I’ll start with words and let the image write itself.

I liked the example of a movie that Calvino used in his article. A film is the perfect representation of images to words and words to images. I especially liked the quote, “This mental cinema is always at work in each one of us, and it always has been, even before the invention of the cinema. Nor does it ever stop projecting images before our mind’s eye.” I can see how visibility relates to visual art. Sometimes artist have feelings or concepts in mind and then use art as a way to release the visual representation of those ideas into the world.