Making Visible (Sichtbarmachen)

Paul Klee's 1920 formula from the Schöpferische Konfession (Creative Credo) — "Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible" ("Die Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar") — transformed by Merleau-Ponty into a general formula for art, literature, and philosophy. Making visible names the positive task that replaces representation: not to reproduce appearance but to bring to visibility what would otherwise remain invisible — the genesis, the dimension, the idea-as-depth-of-visible. Klee's formula is the operating phrase of Carbone's *Flesh of Images* ch. 3; it recurs in E&M, V&I, the Signs Introduction, and the 1958–61 course notes as MP's core programmatic alternative to mimesis.

Key Points

  • Klee 1920: "Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible" (Creative Credo). MP transcribes this in his 1958–59 course notes and opens ch. 3 of Flesh of Images with it.
  • Klee 1924: in On Modern Art, "the work of art, too, is above all a process of creation [Auch das Kunstwerk ist in erster Linie Genesis]." The Genesis formulation is what MP attends to: making-visible is making-genesis-visible.
  • MP's own phrase, "to grasp the sense of the world or of history in its nascent state" (PhP xxxv), is assimilated by Carbone to Klee's Sichtbarmachen: phenomenology and modern painting share making-visible as their task.
  • Philosophy as making-visible by words: V&I 266 — "Philosophy shows by words [fait voir par des mots]. Like all literature." MP's late idea of philosophy is assimilated to Klee's formula.
  • Proust anticipates Klee: Swann's Way I, on Vinteuil's "little phrase" — the phrase "had captured, had rendered visible" essences that would otherwise remain incommunicable. MP connects this directly to Klee's Sichtbarmachen (carbone-2015-flesh-of-images ch. 4).
  • Structural counterpart to voyance: voyance names the structure of seeing; making visible names the structure of showing. Same event, two poles.

Details

Klee's Formula and the Visibility of the Invisible

Klee's Sichtbarmachen is not a claim about what art represents but a redefinition of what art does. Reproduction presupposes that the object is fully visible independently of the artwork, which then takes a second-order image of it. Making visible inverts this: the visible is first brought to visibility by the artwork. What the work makes visible is not an already-seen thing but the genesis of thinghood — the nascent state of the visible.

MP's 1959–60 course "Nature and Logos: The Human Body" concludes with the formulation "a philosophy of the flesh as the visibility of the invisible" (carbone-2015-flesh-of-images ch. 3, pp. 33–34). The phrase is MP's own, but it is inseparable from Klee's: if art is making-visible, then the visibility of the invisible is what art shows. The invisible here is not a de facto invisible (something hidden behind the visible), nor an absolute invisible (something with no relation to the visible), but the invisible of the visible — its dimension, its depth, its lining (V&I Ch 4).

Faire voir par des mots: Philosophy as Making-Visible

In V&I 266, MP extends Klee's formula to philosophy: "Philosophy shows by words. Like all literature." This is decisive: philosophy does not describe its object but makes it visible (by words). The alternative to "grasping" (begreifen, Begriff) is making-visible (zeigen, sichtbarmachen, faire voir).

MP's anti-conceptual mood in the late period is not a rejection of conceptuality but a reorientation: the concept should show rather than grasp. Carbone (ch. 3 p. 39–40) sharpens this: "Philosophy, just as contemporary literature, tends to tie a 'new bond' with the visible, through which it would be able to sichtbar machen, that is, 'make visible.'" The hyphen "philosophy-cinema" (see philosophy-cinema) is also a rearticulation in these terms.

Three Registers: Painting, Literature, Philosophy

Carbone's ch. 3 is structured around the convergence of three registers of making-visible:

  1. Painting (Klee): "Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible" — Sichtbarmachen as the painterly program.
  2. Literature (Proust, Claudel, Rimbaud): Proust's "little phrase" had "rendered visible" the incommunicable essence; Claudel's L'œil écoute names the synesthetic making-visible through speech; Rimbaud's voyant pushes literature to "see." MP transfers Klee's formula to literature.
  3. Philosophy: V&I 266 — "Philosophy shows by words. Like all literature." The philosopher does not grasp being but makes it visible.

These three registers are not analogies. They are three modes of the same operation: making-visible by the medium proper to each art (paint, words, concepts-as-shown).

Why Reproduction Fails: The Anti-Platonic Argument

Klee's refusal of reproduction is not mere formalism. It is ontological. If the artwork reproduced a visible thing, it would be a "second thing" (E&M, via Carbone's Intro) — a copy of a prior model. This is Platonism in the most simplified sense: the image as degraded copy of the form.

MP inverts this: the artwork creates a presence that "had never been present before." The artwork does not copy a model; it makes visible what the model would not have been visible without the artwork. "If the image is not 'a second thing,' if it does not copy a model (but rather creates it), it reveals being much closer to the experience of birth than to that of death" (carbone-2015-flesh-of-images Intro p. 2).

This connects Sichtbarmachen to the deeper anti-Platonic doctrine of sensible-ideas: ideas are not "veiled" in Plato's sense (as higher things temporarily occluded) but are inseparable from their sensible carriers. The sensible carrier makes visible the idea; remove the carrier and you do not see the idea more purely — you do not see it at all.

The Klee-Proust-Merleau-Ponty Triad

Carbone (ch. 4 pp. 53–54) brings three texts together:

  • Proust (Swann's Way I, 334): of Vinteuil's "little phrase": "Those graces of an intimate sorrow, 'twas them that the phrase endeavoured to imitate, to create anew; and even their essence, for all that it consists in being incommunicable and in appearing trivial to everyone save him who has experience of them, the little phrase had captured, had rendered visible."
  • Klee (Creative Credo 1920): "Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible."
  • MP ("Film and New Psychology" 1945, conclusion): "Phenomenological or existential philosophy [. . .] [is] an attempt to make us see the bond between subject and world, between subject and others, rather than to explain it as the classical philosophies did by resorting to absolute spirit."

The three texts are co-temporal registers of a single formula. Proust writes of music; Klee of painting; MP of phenomenology. Rendered visible = macht sichtbar = faire voir. The convergence is not MP's reading-back but a historical convergence of art and philosophy around the same programmatic phrase.

Cinema: "Making Seen Instead of Explaining"

MP's 1945 IDHEC lecture's closing move — "the film doesn't mean anything but itself. The idea is presented in a nascent state, that is to say, in its unconceptualized form" — is Klee's Sichtbarmachen applied to cinema. Carbone's ch. 4 title for this section ("Making Seen Instead of Explaining: The Historical Convergence of Cinema and Philosophy") registers the same point: cinema, like painting, does not explain but makes seen.

This extends to the philosophy-cinema program: a philosophy that listens to cinema as a-philosophical "fundamental thought" (fundamental-thought-in-art) is a philosophy that lets cinema's Sichtbarmachen operate on philosophy itself — not a philosophy that describes cinema's images from outside.

The Counter-Model: Kosmotheoréin / Begriff / Vor-stellung

Making visible has three counter-models:

  • Kosmotheoréin (Greek): absolute contemplating, the god's-eye view. MP rejects this as impossible; the viewer is never outside what is seen.
  • Begriff (German "concept," etymologically grasp): conceptual possession. MP (Signs "Everywhere and Nowhere" 138): "to open the concept without destroying it" — to let it show rather than grasp.
  • Vor-stellung (German "representation," etymologically set-up-before): Heidegger's pejorative for the subjective-objective posture of modern metaphysics. MP sides with Heidegger: voyance and Sichtbarmachen replace Vor-stellung.

Latin alternative: conceptus from cum-capio, "taking-together," welcoming. Carbone (ch. 3 p. 40 via Perniola/Gracián): a "concept" that welcomes rather than grasps is a making-visible concept. This etymological move opens an alternative to the Begriff tradition from within the concept-word itself.

Connections

  • is the programmatic formula of fundamental-thought-in-art — art that makes visible without explaining is fundamental thought in operation
  • is the showing side of voyance — voyance is seeing-farther; making visible is showing-farther
  • is the structure that produces sensible-ideas — sensible ideas are made visible by their sensible carriers
  • is the operating program of philosophy-cinema — cinema as a-philosophical Sichtbarmachen
  • grounds light-of-the-flesh — the light of the flesh is what makes visible
  • contrasts with kosmotheoréin, Begriff as grasping, Vor-stellung as objectification
  • extends indirect-language — language as making-visible is indirect language by MP's definition
  • is performed by paul-klee (the formula), marcel-proust ("rendered visible"), paul-claudel (The Eye Listens), paul-cezanne ("the world's instant")
  • is assimilated by MP's later idea of philosophy (V&I 266) — "Philosophy shows by words. Like all literature."
  • is the rhetorical site that Faul and van Sorge both correct — see claims#faul-vansorge-corrective-convergence (candidate); the "rendering visible" rhetoric where it slides toward universal presence is corrected by Faul's institutional-interactive routing through the world's openness and by van Sorge's parergon-framing routing through the embodied subject's undecidability

Caution: Van Sorge's Diagnosis of MP's Painterly Wielding

Van Sorge 2025 raises a corrective interpretive thesis (live; see claims#mp-painting-account-too-presence-bound (live)) about MP's painterly deployment of making-visible. Her diagnosis: when MP wields the formula in EM and "Cézanne's Doubt," it sometimes slides toward an over-strong claim of accessibility — "[the painter] gives visible existence to what profane vision believes to be invisible" (EM 127); the silent world becomes "uttered and accessible" (IL 51, emphasis hers); the work has "a claim on every possible mind" (CD 20). On her reading, these claims are internally inconsistent with MP's own perception-theoretic commitments to limited perspective and lining-of-invisibility (see visible-invisible#Van Sorge's Diagnosis: MP's Painterly Deployment Vs. His Perception Theory).

The corrective: every act of making visible is co-constitutively an act of making invisible — what is foregrounded entails what is backgrounded; what is rendered for one embodied perceiver is not universally rendered. Making visible must be tracked together with the parergon of framing (see parergon, embodied-act-of-framing): every framing-decision determines what becomes visible and what is excluded. The Klee–MP doctrine is not contested at this page — it stands as established. What van Sorge contests is the over-strong gloss that takes "rendering visible" as universal accessibility rather than as making-the-structural-invisible-thematically-appear.

Open Questions

  • Does making visible exclude all representational art, or does it redescribe what representation does well when it does it well? (MP seems to side with inclusion of good representation; Klee's own practice does not.)
  • How does making visible relate to Heidegger's Entbergen (unconcealment)? Both are anti-representational figures of truth-as-showing. Carbone does not develop this parallel but the structural similarity is striking.
  • Is philosophical making-visible (V&I 266) different in kind from artistic making-visible, or only in medium?
  • What is the relationship between making-visible and sedimentation? Does the making-visible sediment into "models" (as Carbone suggests in *khôra* discussion), or does it remain always in the nascent state?
  • Is van Sorge's reading of MP's painterly wielding (uttered and accessible; every possible mind) a correction of MP or a completion of him? Marratto (2012) and Carbone (2015) read MP-on-painting and MP-on-perception as consistent; van Sorge reads them as internally tense. Live claim, see claims#mp-painting-account-too-presence-bound.

Sources

  • carbone-2015-flesh-of-images — ch. 3 entirely ("'Making Visible': Merleau-Ponty and Paul Klee"), pp. 31–40. The most sustained treatment of this doctrine. Opens with Klee's formula; connects to Klee's 1924 "On Modern Art"; develops voyance as the vision-side of making-visible; situates philosophy-as-showing-by-words. Ch. 4 pp. 53–54: Proust-Klee-MP triad.
  • merleau-ponty-1961-eye-and-mind — multiple references: "Klee's line" passages (§4); the "autofigurative" characterization; "renders visible." The enacted demonstration of the doctrine.
  • merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible — Ch 4 on sensible ideas as "veiled with shadows" but made visible by the veil; working note p. 266 — "Philosophy shows by words. Like all literature."
  • merleau-ponty-2022-possibility-of-philosophy — preparatory notes: Klee extensively discussed (pp. 52–61); Sichtbarmachen cited (p. 56na, p. 58).
  • Paul Klee, Schöpferische Konfession ("Creative Credo," 1920) and Über die moderne Kunst (On Modern Art, 1924). Klee's Notebooks Vol. I The Thinking Eye (ed. Spiller, 1956 German / 1959 French) cited by MP in his course notes.