Louis Marin - Opacity and Transparence in Pictorial Representation

Louis Marin

Opacity and transparence in pictorial representation

[referring to Paul Klee's The R Villa]

The capital red letter R inscribed on a landscape-representation seems to annihilate the illusory depth of the picture, especially the depth created by the road or the river. It makes the painting a simple "show". It is written on the transparent plane of representation and through that letter the whole painting seems to become a set of signs, of pictograms, of ideograms; the whole painting becomes writing