Four primary realities, two framing registers
Material, psychic, public, and painted realities remain distinct while touching one another. Editorial and revenant registers frame and cross them. Coal, wages, rooms, doors, portraits, voices, and the final canvas prevent any one register from explaining the others away.
Ghosts remain persons
Marc, Klimt, Rita, Alistair, and posthumous Hermann are not labels attached to historical ideas. They act, err, joke, interrupt, seduce, resist, and encounter limits. Their supernatural offices matter because personhood exceeds office.
No innocent outside
Painter, editor, critic, archive, and reader all enter the arrangement they describe. The house therefore tests every interpretation: does it preserve the weight of bodies and objects, or does it make them scenery for a beautiful theory?