The use of shadows in the history of visual arts based on selected European cases.

Abstract

Although, apparently it may seem that the shadow is an obvious component of art and always accompanied it, this work’s main aim is to present the shadow from a different perspective, pointing to the beginning of its existence in the arts and numerous meanings, which it took up throughout the centuries. To maintain the ease in understanding these complex processes, all events are kept in chronological order. My considerations begin from the ancient philosophers, Plato and Pliny, and the first mention of the shadow in the context of the visual arts. Analysing the Myth of the Cave, and fragments of The Natural History, we can see strongly contradictory associations. On the one hand, shadow confronted with the pure good - the light, it is charged with a negative meaning as it is contradicted to the pursuit of knowledge. Pliny, on the other hand, offers not only the observation that the shadow gave birth to the next field of art after painting, which is the sculpture, but also gave it the first metaphysical meaning. In the next part I focus on the shadows in paintings by looking at the Renaissance, where the shadow only served to build the perspective, however, it remained invisible itself. This was changed in the next era - as indicated by Strzemiński, the transition to the Baroque is largely noticing and harmonising the shadow as did Caravaggio. Another milestone in the history of its development was guaranteed by the Surrealism and Dada artists and their paintings breaking the existing rules. What is important in this part of the work is that I show that the shadow was not only used as a mean of expression but rather served to fulfil the main objectives of the established rules of the movements such as automatism or the principle of using everyday objects. This section analyses the image of Giorgio de Chirico, discussing new meanings in the shadows’ history; as an element contributing to creating the narrative and as an element introducing the metaphysical aspect of the work. There is also briefly discussed effect of the so-called demonisation of the shadow by the inventions like projecting machines constructed by Athanasius Kircher and Giambattista Della Porta, that had a powerful impact on the negative perception of it. Shadow accompanied, or even inspired, subsequent inventions such as camera obscura, an early prototype of today’s camera. If considering the shadow in photography it is worth to mention a more experimental approach and to describe what the photograms were. They can be made by placing objects on light sensitive paper and, after exposing it to the source of light, the final images is developed in the darkroom. The results were often surprising and interesting, that is why they were often reached for by artists such as Bauhaus teacher Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Polish pioneer of photography in graphic design Wojciech Zamecznik. Photograms were used by them either as individual finished work or as the initial idea, then processed in various ways, resulting in a poster or a book cover. From the photography we smoothly move on to the film, dividing the section into two subsections. First, I write about the achievements of German Expressionism and about how the shadow became a distinct character in them, as well as the symbol of internal experiences of our hero and his vague intentions. Shadow also directly accompanied the method of creation of innovative films by Themersons so-called moving photograms. Films made by the Polish art couple did not survive the war, however, retained stills demonstrate their high technical advancement. As the last examples analysed in the context of the shadow is contemporary art, in particular looking at the installations by Boltanski such as Theatre D'ombres and printed in 3D sculptures of scientists from University College London - Niloy J. Mitra and Mark Pauly, thus proving the proof that the shadow flexibly respond to the technological changes and it is still an attractive form of expression.