Abstract
The aim of this paper is considering the visual power of the image of art facing it to the power of contemporary worldview. Given that every knowledge on the world is at the same time a self-representation, or an image of the self, the disappearance of the border between the art world and the everyday world is engaging a struggle among possibly different worldviews. Recalling Heidegger’s notion of Weltbild, in order to avoid a terminological confusion, we can call the worldview in the Heideggerian sense the “Weltbild A” (the “worldview” as the singular dimension that unifies all possible “worldviews” in the form of cultural world), and we can call the world as it is represented in a work of art the “Weltbild B”. Since this battleground itself is a “world” in which its image character is concerned, it can be described as the “world view C”. Whether and how an image acts as the force of a world’s formation is the central question: some examples, from Hiroshige to Klee, foster the awareness that any free artistic activity can be understood as a counter-movement against the leveling force of an only worldview. A work of art, between East and West, can thus be understood as the battlefield where we strive in order to create a space of freedom.