Troppo vero! Opacity, density, noise and thickness of images

Abstract

The following essay discusses the techniques that have rendered transparency in visual arts, from Raphael’s unione to Tintoretto’s pittura di tocco e di macchia and the use of air in contemporary arts. The hypothesis is double: first, that visual arts and architecture have constructed modes of rendering transparency while cultivating opacity and density, either of the image or of the living body; second, that transparency is a privileged motif because it crystallises the iconological core of the image, i.e. what visual arts disclose and conceal. From veils to curtains, from soap bubbles to air conditioners, transparency reveals how the image mediates the senses and sensibilities of Western culture.