by Jon Lackman | 6 March 2007 | Journals
The Winter 2006-07 issue of Cabinet is devoted to “shadows.” It includes an interview with Victor I. Stoichita, author of A Short History of the Shadow, which explored “how the shadow has always been integral to theories of art and knowledge.” Excerpts from the interview: “art historians took a long time in paying attention to shadows because shadows are, so to speak, heavy, dark, and ugly … I was struck by the strange parallels between the Platonic story of the origins of knowledge and Pliny’s story about the origin of painting. Maybe one of the most important differences between them is that, in Pliny’s story about the origin of representation, the shadow wasn’t charged with a negative aspect: the story of the maid of Corinth tracing her lover’s shadow on a wall and thereby giving birth to painting is a wonderful story, a love story, and not at all negative, unlike Plato’s story about the origin of knowledge. But interestingly, despite the positive approach to the shadow in Pliny’s story, the myth was slowly forgotten. I think for the western mentality, accepting that representation originated in the absence of light, in a dark spot, was difficult to accept.”
[via 3 Quarks Daily]
