by Dr. Clement Darnley, Professor of Aesthetic Theory, University of Sussex
Invisibilism, that beguiling spectre of a movement born in the misty hinterlands of mid-Wales, has spent the past five decades whispering into the ears of critics, curators, and collectors alike. Its adherents tell us that art need not be seen to be felt, need not be made to be meaningful, and indeed, that its very absence constitutes its essence. They have built careers on unmade beds, then removed even the beds. It is time we put our foot down—albeit cautiously, lest we step on one of their invisible sculptures.
Let us be clear: the proposition that art can reside solely in the conceptual, in the “implied presence,” is not inherently bankrupt. Duchamp taught us that context matters; Cage reminded us that silence, too, can sing. But where Duchamp provoked and Cage composed, the Invisibilists have absconded. They have offered not the idea of art, but the idea of the idea of art—a conceptual matryoshka doll that contains, at its core, a profound reluctance to engage with material reality.
Invisibilism insists upon belief without evidence. It demands the viewer do all the heavy lifting—conceptualise the object, imagine its contours, imbue it with emotion, and finally, applaud its absence. This is not artistic generosity; it is abdication. To praise it is to commend a playwright for a script unwritten or a chef for a meal imagined. Art must, in some form, meet the world. The refusal to manifest is not radical; it is evasive.
The movement cloaks itself in intellectual hauteur, referencing Kantian noumena, Zen impermanence, and Derridean absence. But these citations, like the artworks themselves, are often more ornamental than operational. At what point does theory become theology? When an entire movement is built upon the assertion that nothing is something—if only you’re clever enough to perceive it—we leave the domain of aesthetics and enter that of scholastic mysticism.
Moreover, Invisibilism’s disdain for visibility has social consequences. By privileging invisibility, the movement tacitly upholds the privilege of those already seen—those with the cultural capital to announce that their absence is meaningful. One wonders how the anonymous, the voiceless, the excluded might fare in a world where even art must vanish to be valued. At its worst, Invisibilism becomes a conceptual aristocracy: available only to those fluent in its codes, its contexts, its recursive riddles.
None of this is to say that minimalism, ephemerality, or conceptual engagement are without merit. But Invisibilism’s ultimate sleight of hand is to mistake emptiness for profundity. To quote the critic Lydia Marston, “The movement’s greatest success is its capacity to be taken seriously despite offering so little—indeed, because it offers so little.” It is a triumph of brand over being, of citation over substance.
Art, at its most generous, gives us something—however elusive—to hold, to feel, to interrogate. Invisibilism gives us the intellectual equivalent of a shrug, wrapped in silk footnotes. It has had its season, its clever salons, its archly empty galleries. But as with all vanishing acts, the applause should not last forever.
Let us remember: the invisible may provoke, but it cannot endure. Art is not merely what disappears into the mind, but what lingers in the world.