The Visual Ledger: Art History and the Disappearance of the Human Figure as Bearer of Ontological Weight, 1849 to 1991

This version substantially expands the original diagnostic framework of The Visual Ledger by introducing empirical grounding, methodological clarification, and new institutional case analysis. The paper develops a diagnostic history of European art between 1849 and 1991, arguing that painters functioned as early detection systems for a structural transformation from ontological density to procedural abstraction. This updated version strengthens the framework by incorporating: A methodological note grounded in documented casework through Giulia, an advocacy service supporting neurodivergent individuals navigating UK welfare systems, including observed abandonment rates and the role of unresolved institutional contradictions. The introduction of key constructs including interpretive debt, cognitive burden, and the Roadrunner Loop as mechanisms explaining systemic failure in contemporary administrative environments. A major expansion of the late twentieth-century analysis through the AIDS crisis, treated as a visibility stress test exposing the limits of governance through surface-based legibility. A new geographical and methodological axis centred on Naples, examining the interaction between Mediterranean catastrophe culture and transnational visual systems through the work of Lucio Amelio, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Banksy. Integration of lived positionality within a triangulated analytical framework, situating institutional disappearance within both archival and experiential domains. This version positions the Visual Ledger as a component of the broader Equilibrium Ledger framework, linking visual culture, institutional behaviour, and cognitive cost distribution across systems.