Contro la trasparenza: Image, Language, and Pre-Interpretation in Contemporary Art

The article critiques the proliferation of curatorial texts, statements, and interpretive frameworks that precede and condition the experience of contemporary artworks. It argues that language increasingly organizes perception before the image can open a territory of perceptual uncertainty, leading to a kind of epistemological anesthesia. The author references Roland Barthes and Georges Didi-Huberman to highlight how images transcend argumentative translatability, yet today this excess is often absorbed by devices of preventive clarification. Works by Mark Rothko, James Turrell, Anselm Kiefer, and Cy Twombly are cited as examples that resist full conceptual translation, acting on the body before becoming content. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's embodied perception and Jacques Derrida's notion of différance, the text posits an asymmetric relationship between image and language: language tends toward determination while the image retains internal opacity. The author defends a pre-decodified encounter as a political stance against the transformation of experience into information, advocating for writing that inhabits the distance between the visible and the sayable rather than closing the image in explanation. The article concludes that contemporary culture increasingly tolerates images that exceed the words meant to contain them.