A Short History of the Shadow

by Victor I. Stoichita

London: Reaktion Books 1997
ISBN1-86189-000-1.

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens


In the 18th century, when Italian Jesuits went to China as missionaries, they were surprised to find that Chinese artists understood but rarely used linear perspective. Nor did they include shadows, because, the Jesuits reported, "they looked like smudges on the face." Shadows are pictorial ephemera; the painting's subject is paramount, while shadows are incidental. We often take shadows for granted, but only since the Renaissance have they been portrayed systematically. This is one of several books in recent years to examine the art historical and symbolic significance of shadows. Well- illustrated and clearly written, A Short History of the Shadow opens with the shadows in Plato's cave and Pliny's assertion that painting began by tracing silhouettes, moves through and beyond the Renaissance, and concludes with a too brief account of their use in this century by Marcel Duchamp, Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, and others.

(Review reprinted from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol 13 No 2, Winter 1997-98)