AboutthisbookThisprovocatively'short'historyofthe shadowopens withareappraisalofthe contributiontothe subjectthatcanbeteased outfrom commentsby Plinythe Elderand Plato. Pliny'smythofthe origin of art, whichidentifies the birth of artistic representation as having taken place in a Corinth potter's home, and Plato's mythof knowledge, set forthby the philosopherin the celebrated allegoryof the cave, both deal with the shadow- the darkspot thatby its presenceconfirmsanabsence. Buttheshadowcanalsobeunderstood to be the present'other' of the body, a fact enforced by the rule of light, so that the shadow can evenbe seento be a form of self representation.Indeed,accordingtoJ. C.Lavatarin the 18thcentury, it was the shadow of the face, not the face itself, thatwas the soul's true reflection. In ourowncentury,GermanExpressionistfilm-makers have used shadowmetaphoricallyto give added- oftenmalevolent- meaning to the nature of 'projection'. More recently, Andy Warhol, in his 66 Shadotos canvases, and [oseph Beuys, in a shamanic Happening photographedasActionDeadMouse,haveinturnexploredtheideaof the shadow as the hyper-realized revelationof utter human emptiness and as the self's awesomely powerfuldoppelgiinger. Victor I. Stoichita explores these recentengagements with the nature of the shadow by wayof the mythof Narcissus, writings on artby Alberti, Vasari and others, a self-portraitby Poussin, a lake gardenby Monet, and many further curious and absorbing undertakings madeby artists since Antiquity. The result is a wholly originaland compellinginvitation to reconsider the verybasis of representationin Westernart. AbouttheauthorVictor I. Stoichita was educated in Bucharest, Romania, and later gained both a PhD from the University of Rome and a Doctoratd'Etatfrom the Sorbonne in Paris. He is currently ProfessorofHistoryofArtatthe UniversityofFribourg,Switzerland. His publications include Visionary Experience intheGolden Ageof Spanish Art (Reaktion, 1995)and TheSelf-Aware Image (1997). ESSAYS IN ART AND CULTURE inthesameseries The LandscapeVision ofPaul Nash In;Roger Cardinal Lookingat the Overlooked Four Essays on StillLifePainting In;Norman Bryson CharlesSheeler and the Cultofthe Machine In;KarenLucic Portraiture In;Richard Brilliant C.R.Mackintosh The Poetics ofWorkmanship In;DavidBrett Imageon the Edge The MarginsofMedievalArt In;MichaelCamille Illustration In;J.Hillis Miller Francis Bacon and the Loss ofSelf In;EmstvanAlphen Paul Delvaux Surrealizingthe Nude In;DavidScott Manet'sSilence and the Poetics ofBouquets In;[amesH. Rubin The SymptomofBeauty In;FrancettePacteau FiguringJasper[ohns In;FredOrton PoliticalLandscape In;MartinWamke Visionary Experience in the GoldenAge ofSpanishArt In;Victor I. Stoichita The DoubleScreen Mediumand Representationin ChinesePainting In;Wu Hung Paintingthe Soul Icons, DeathMasks, andShrouds In;Robin Cormack A Short History of the Shadow Victor I. Stoichita , REAKTION BOOKS PublishedbyReaktionBooksLtd 79FarringdonRoad, LondonEC1M 3Ju, UK Firstpublished1997,reprinted1999 Copyright©Victor1.Stoichita,1997 Allrightsreserved. Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,stored inaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyform orbyanymeans,electronic,mechanical,photocopying, recordingorotherwise,withouttheprior permissionofthepublishers. TranslatedbyAnne-MarieGlasheen CoverandtextdesignedbyHumphreyStone PhotosetbyWilmasetLtd. Birkenhead,Wirral PrintedinGreatBritainby BASPrinters,OverWallop, Hampshire British LibraryCataloguinginPublicationData: Stoichita,Victor1. Ashorthistoryoftheshadow.-(Essays in artandculture) 1.Shadesandshadows2. Perspective3.Shadows inart 1.Title 701.8'2 ISBN1861890001 Publishedwiththe contributionoftheCouncilof theUniversityofFribourg,Switzerland Contents Introduction 7 1 The Shadow Stage 11 2 The Shadow of the Flesh 42 3 A Shadow on the Painting 89 4 Around 'The Uncanny' 123 5 Man and his Doubles 153 6 Of Shadow and its Reproducibility during the Photographic Era 187 7 In the Shadow of the Eternal Return 200 References 243 List of Illustrations 259 Introduction We know verylittle about the birth ofpainting, said Plinythe Elderin his Natural History(xxxv, 14).Onething, however, is certain: it was born the first time the human shadow was circumscribed by lines. It is of unquestionable significance that the birth of Western artistic representation was 'in the negative'. When painting first emerged, it was part of the absence/presence theme (absence of the body; presence ofits projection). The historyofartisinterspersedwiththe dialectic of this relationship. At the time that Plinywas outlininghis treatise (during the first century AD), the pictorial image was already - and had beenfor sometime- more thanjustthe outlineofa darkspot. The shadow had been integrated into the area of a complex representationto suggestthe third dimension- volume, relief, the body. Initially (to the author of the Natural Historyas well as to his artistic contemporaries) the shadow-image was no more than a distant memory, a half-mythical, half-historical fact, a sign of its origins that had to be perceived (or recognized) but which was constantly evaded: what - asked one of Pliny's contemporaries - would havebeen the result if no one had done more than his predecessors? The reply was: 'theartofpaintingwouldhavebeenrestrictedto tracingaline round a shadow thrown in the sunlight' (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, x, ii, 7). This inaugurative statement, borne out by several sources, can be compared to another account, one that establishes the Western theory of knowledge: Plato's myth of the cave. Plato imagines primitive man imprisoned in a cave (The Republic, 517-19);he cando no more thanstareat the backofhis prison - on the wall of which are projected the shadows of an external reality, the existence of which he does not even suspect. Onlyby turning around and facing the world of the sun can he gain access to real knowledge. Pliny's and Plato's myths are parallel accounts that do not communicate on the level of discourse but which facilitate a dialogue on the hermeneutic level. If they have never been 7 studied together, it is probably due primarily to the highly risky nature of such an enterprise. Plato and Pliny speak of different things within different contexts. However, several factors would justify theirbeing read as a dialogue: theyboth dealwithmythsoforigin (withPlinythemythof artandwith Platothe mythof knowledge); the mythregarding the birthof artistic representation and the one regarding the birth of cognitiverepresentationare centredon themotifofprojection; this early projection is a dark spot - a shadow. Art (real art) and knowledge (real knowledge) are its transcendence. The relationship with the origins (the relationship with the shadow) characterizes the history of Western representation. This book aims to trace the milestones of thathistory. Since it is the study of a negative entityit should come as no surprise that little has been said about it so far. In fact, this is the first time such an inquiry has been undertaken in any coherent way. Our conception of history - Hegel's, that is - and our conception of representation - Plato's in fact - have enabled and encouraged us to approach the history of light" from different angles but have circumvented the possibility of a historyoftheshadow, and it was Hegel himself who indirectly delineated the nature of this ambiguity: But one pictures being to oneself, perhaps in the image of pure light as the clarity of undimmed seeing [die Klarheit ungetriibien Sehens], and then nothing as pure night - and their distinction is linked with this very familiar sensuous difference. But, as amatteroffact, ifthis veryseeingismore exactly imagined, one can readily perceive that in absolute clearness [in derabsoluten Klarheit] thereisseenjustas much, andas little,as in absolutedarkness,thattheoneseeingisas good as the other, that pure seeing is a seeing of nothing. Pure light and pure darkness are two voids which are the same thing. Something can be distinguished [unterscheiden] onlyin determinatelightor darkness (lightisdeterminedby darkness and so is darkened light, and darkness is deter minedbylight,isilluminateddarkness),andfor this reason, thatitisonlydarkenedlight[getriibtesLicht] andilluminated darkness which have within themselves the moment of difference and are, therefore, determinate being [Dasein].2 Consequently, it is only from a strictly Hegelian viewpoint that the study of the relationship between shadow and light 8