The Message in the Shadow: Noise AND Knowledge William Sharpe, Columbia University oise
• Shadows are found almost everywhere in the visual arts • People respond to them on conscious and subconscious levels, but rarely pause to analyze them • Viewers derive a lot of emotional and intellectual pleasure from works in which shadows figure strongly or weakly • But the complexity of shadows means a certain amount of “noise” will be part of the artistic message (which in itself will often be debatable)
Skillful, Subtle Shadow=Noise Reducer Andrea Previtali, Salvator Mundi, 1519
Attention-Getting Shadow =Noisier Shadow Lois Dodd, Shadow of Painter Painting, 2009
Challenges in Shadow Depiction (Technical Noise to Conrol) • Need to capture accurate shape, location, direction, perspective, density, edges, texture of surface, etc. • Remember "taboo" of shadow falling on a person above the waist • Need to avoid shadow clutter in overall design • Need to avoid correct shadows that look wrong and if necessary use incorrect shadows that look right.
Masaccio, The Tribute Money, c. 1427
• Message in Shadow can be technical or mimetic (location of objects in space) • Message can also be semantic/conceptual • Biblical shadow is protective Isaiah 51.16: "I . . . have covered you in the shadow of my hand." Luke 1:35, angel to Mary: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.” • Modern shadow is often troubling, threatening, an unknown impulse or fear, repressed desire • Generally speaking the shadow is mysterious, a sort of gap in representation that we fill in with our own personal/cultural interpretation
F. W. Murnau, Nosferatu (1922)
F. W. Murnau, Nosferatu , 1922
Emile Friant, Ombres Portées, 1891
Global Noise Reduction: Four Visual/Semantic Categories of Art-Shadow • CONNECTED SHADOW • Appears to expresses the substance of self = Vital shadow • Appears to lack substance, not part of self = Look Elsewhere shadow • DISCONNECTED SHADOW • Caster without shadow, expressing a vital substance to be lost or gained = Completing shadow • Shadow without caster, becomes its own substance= Independent shadow • All shadows fit in at least one of these categories; a shadow can belong to more than one category •
I The Vital Shadow Connected to caster and its inner substance; we perceive that it reveals something essential about caster
Joseph Benoit Suvée, The Invention of the Art of Drawing (1793)
David Allan, The Origin of Painting, 1775
Francine van Hove, Dibutades (2007)
Thomas Holloway, A Sure and Convenient Machine for Drawing Silhouettes, 1792
• • Lavatar, 1783: page featuring Moses Mendelssohn's profile (top): "My gaze runs from the marvelous arch of the forehead to the sharp bones of the eye. In these depths resides a Socratic soul. Mark the wonderful transition from nose to upper lip […] how all this combines to make the divine truth of physiognomy palpable and visible."
Gustave Doré , Poe’s The Raven, 1884 To be in the shadow of something is to feel its power
Munch, Puberty (1894)
Robert Weine (dir.), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1919
Thomas Roma, 2011: "There was something about the primal nature of the shadows of these little lovable pets of ours. Their shadows, I felt, revealed a wilder side of their nature."
Baltimore Police in riot gear, Baltimore, Md., April 28, 2015. Photo by Eric Thayer/Reuters
II The Look Elsewhere Shadow Connected to caster but is not substance; asks viewer to look instead at caster and/or ponder illusions of shadows (Plato’s cave underlies this usage)
Workshop of Robert Campin, Virgin and Child in an Interior, before 1432
“Elsewhere” Shadow devices for increasing verisimilitude of a painting (Gombrich) • Shadows to make objects at bottom of picture seem to project • Shadows at base of objects, giving impression of weight and solidity • Shadows to increase drama (chiaroscuro; Caravaggio and Rembrandt) • Angled shadows to give impression of depth and perspective • Dense shadows to give impression of bright sunlight, etc.
Velasquez, “Imperceptible shadows”: The Forge of Vulcan, 1630
Shadow adapted to artistic purpose: Bernardo Bellotto, New Market Square in Dresden, 1750
Shadow as Lie? 1010 (street artist), Berlin
Constructed Shadow: Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Dirty White Trash (with Gulls), 1998
Kumi Yamashita, Exclamation Point, 1995
Kumi Yamashita, City View, 2003
Yamashita, City View, 2003
Reduced shadow noise: Newcastle Brown Beer Billboard San Diego, 2011, ad agency Vitro and artists Ellis Gallagher and Pablo Power
Trick shadow: Poster for Star Wars Episode I, 1998
Old Folks’ Shadows
Magritte, The Uncertainty Principle, 1944, "An object is presented against a background on which its shadow falls, with the amendment that the shadow is that of some quite different object.”
III The Completing Shadow Shadow disconnected from caster; shadow represents full humanity of caster but is absent or in the process of being lost or acquired
George Cruikshank, Peter Schlemihl Selling His Shadow, 1827
EugèneDelacroix, Hamlet, 1848
Wendy Sewing On Peter Pan’s Shadow, Disney film, 1953
Munch, The Lonely Ones (1889)
Alain Resnais, Last Year at Marienbad, 1961
Mark Tansey, Triumph Over Mastery II
IV The Independent Shadow --Shadow stands alone as its own substance, without a caster visible --Begins in 19 th c. “If instead of a figure you put the shadow only of a person, that is an original point of departure, the strangeness of which you have calculated.” -Paul Gauguin, 1888
Jean-Leon Gerome, Golgotha: Consumatus Est (1867)
Renoir, Le Pont des Arts, 1867
Hopper, Night Shadows, 1921
William Rimmer, Flight and Pursuit, 1872
Giorgio De Chirico, Melancholy and Mystery of a Street, 1914
Carol Reed, The Third Man, 1949
Flatness of shadow lends itself to abstract aesthetic patterns: Paul Strand, Porch Shadows,1916
Marcel Duchamp, Shadows of Readymades, 1918
Ellis Gallagher in action, Brooklyn NY, 2009
Lee Friedlander, Self Portrait (on Maria) (1966)
Shadow without context: Andy Warhol, Shadows, 1978
Andy Warhol, Shadows, 1978; 102 silkscreen canvases as exhibited at Hirschhorn Museum, 2011
Arthur Tress, Andy Warhol at Shadows Installation, 1979
Arthur Tress, Shadow: A Novel, 1975
In art there is not the same urgency to decode shadow noise as there is in daily life; we can take our time and find music in the silent noise of the shadow.
Mario Martinelli, Capturing Shadows on the street
Konrad Witz, Annunciation, c1445
Courbet, Bonjour M. Courbet, 1854
Strøk (Anders Gjennestad) is a stencil artist and mural maker from Norway.
William Holman Hunt, The Shadow of Death (1870)
John Singer Sargent, Corfu: Lights and Shadows, 1909
Munch, House in Moonlight, 1895
exile from painting from 1967 to 1970)[14] feature single words depicted in a trompe l’oeil technique, as if the words are formed from ribbons of curling paper
Ellis Gallagher, Triple Bike, 2009
John Singer Sargent, El Jaleo, 1882
Jacob Collins, Grimaldi In Studio, c2000
Ellis Gallagher
Lois Dodd, Self Portrait
Rook Floro , I’m Sitting Here Casting My Shadow
Louis Nemerth, Thanksgiving (Coming Events Cast Their Shadows Before) c. 1950
Emile Bernard, Iron Bridges at Asnieres, 1887
Sheet Music cover, Me and My Shadow, 1927
William Collins, Rustic Civility, 1833
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