Dipingere l'assenza: Edward Hopper e le annunciazioni senza messaggio

This paper addresses Hopper’s painting as a “pictorial epoché” that opens the way to the manifestation of the phenomenological conditions of appearance. Nevertheless the event of appearance seems to be strictly inseparable from the partial visibility of its manifestation. For this reason it could be said that Hopper’s paintings realize a topology of the “unseen” based on a structure of announcement phenomenology, which main elements are the Annunciation of the absence and the abyss of the waiting. The unseen is thus the trace of an absolute invisibility appearing in the punctum caecum of the visible disclosed by the pictorial space.