Shadow Essay

718 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Oedipus The King Allegory Of The Cave

Engagements with the nature of the Shadow

Intro

The shadow is one of the many doors to gaining access to the origins of western representation and is revealed by the myths of its origins, the myth of Plinly the Elder about the potter from Corinth and Plato’s allegory of the cave. Plinly the elder considers the shadow as the origin of pictorial representation. The story is about the potter Btades of Corinth and his daughter. The girl’s lover is leaving on a journey to go to war and the daughter decides to create a surrogate image of him in order to keep a part of him with her. The daughter’s lover ends up dying so the father creates a semblance by giving the specter consistency by filling his outline with clay and baking it in the stove to harden it. The semblance was then put with pots and later in the Temple of Corinth.

The story evokes many ideas that fill the shadows void with substance. The first and most obvious is that the daughter’s action represents the origin of painting and the father’s action the origins of sculpture. Therefore it is viable to say that general artistic representation can be traced back to the primitive shadow stage. The second is that the first act of representation of the human form did not come from observing the body but from the bodies’ projection and that the first painting was a copy of a copy. The shadow becomes a mnemonic aid and makes the absent become present. There is also the aspect of time as the real shadow of the lover is present only with him and constantly moving while his surrogate image is removed from the natural order of time and is frozen in the face of progress. This has a direct connection to photography and cognitive representation.

Jean Babttiste Re...

... middle of paper ...

... the Sick with His Shadow, 1427-1428. Fresco at the Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.

The shadow has also played an important part in the history of cinema brought forth by the German Expressionist movement. In the movies The cabinet of Doctor Caligari, and Nosferatu one can see giant projections of the characters shadow. It is the externalization of the person’s inner self, a distortion and projection onto the inner screen of the psyche. Through out Nosferatu the shadow releases its fist to present long shrivelled fingers. The focus on the hands as an instrument of action thematizes the idea that the shadow in this instance is an active instrument of evil. The shadow acts as a metaphor or hyperbole of the key medium of Expressionist cinema, the Close up. The very nature of cinematic production and the mechanics of its appeal are challenged.

Show More
Related

  • Comparison of Masaccio's The Holy Trinity and Grunewald's The Isenheim Altarpiece

    958 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Holy Trinity by Masaccio was a painting done in approximately 1428. It is a

    Read More

  • Night Essay

    1089 Words  | 3 Pages

    When a person's faith is also an alternative for their culture and morals, it proves challenging to take that sense of security in that faith away from them. In Night, Elie Wiesel, a Jewish student living in Sighet, Transylvania during the war of 1942, uses his studies in Talmud and the Kabbalah as not only a religious practice but a lifestyle. Elie and his fellow civilians are warned, however, by his Kabbalah teacher who says that during the war, German aggressors are aggregately imprisoning, deporting, and annihilating millions of Jews. When Elie and his family are victim of this aggression, Elie realizes how crucial his faith in God is if he is to survive the Holocaust. He vows after being separated from his mother and sisters that he will protect he and his father from death, even though as death nears, Elie gradually becomes closer to losing his faith. In the end, to Elie's devastation, Elie makes it out of the Holocaust alone after his father dies from the intense seclusion to malnutrition and deprivation. Elie survives the Holocaust through a battle of conscience--first by believing in God, then resisting his faith in God, and ultimately replacing his faith with obligation to his father.

    Read More

  • Advertisement: Greek Statue and Perfume

    1461 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...indow streaming natural light seems to be the only source of light in the room. It falls directly on the action, the man holding the woman. Their shadows then form flawlessly across the canvas and their profiles are in perfect shape. The statue, which is behind the canvas, is in complete shadows, again signifying the conservative part of the image that hides in the shadows.

    Read More

  • Night Essay

    580 Words  | 2 Pages

    “All I had to do was to close my eyes for a second to see a whole world passing by, to dream a whole lifetime.”(83) Elie Wiesel chose a unique way to write his novel Night in order to draw attention to what was happening. Wiesel attempts to engage his readers by using diction, imagery, and organization.

    Read More

  • Rokeby Venus

    855 Words  | 2 Pages

    The painting, in its simplest form, consists of a naked woman lying elegantly upon stately and rich cloths, while a young, also nude boy, is holding a mirror which contains her reflection. Upon first glance of this work, I was quickly able to make out the identity of the two subjects. ...

    Read More

  • The Song of the Lark

    813 Words  | 2 Pages

    When first approaching this work, one feels immediately attracted to its sense of wonder and awe. The bright colors used in the sun draws a viewer in, but the astonishment, fascination, and emotion depicted in the expression on the young woman keeps them intrigued in the painting. It reaches out to those who have worked hard in their life and who look forward to a better future. Even a small event such as a song of a lark gives them hope that there will be a better tomorrow, a thought that can be seen though the countenance by this girl. Although just a collection of oils on a canvas, she is someone who reaches out to people and inspires them to appreciate the small things that, even if only for a short moment, can make the road ahead seem brighter.

    Read More

  • The Goldfinch Analysis

    1153 Words  | 3 Pages

    Theo and the young Narrator similarly discover the revelatory capacity of art through a single pivotal painting and author respectively, both which become significant motifs in either text. Tartt utilizes an existent painting ‘The Goldfinch’ as a fixed point of reference, which, for both Theo and the reader provides a sense of reality and constancy ‘rais[ing him] above the surface’ of an otherwise tumultuous childhood. Whereas Proust uses a fictional author, ‘Bergotte’, to communicate the universality of art, and invite the reader, through the vivid immediacy with which the Narrator’s early reading experiences are described, to participate in his epiphanic discovery that art can translate ‘imperceptible truths which would never have [otherwise] been revealed to us’ (97). Artistic imagery becomes a motif in Proust’s descriptions of scenes of domesticity and nature. In a scene recounting Francoise ‘masterful’ preparation of a family meal the Narrator describes asparagus in the technical language of painting as ‘finely stippled’ provoking an association between his observations of asparagus and the creation of a painting. By forming this improbable link he elevates unremarkable asparagus to the ‘precious’ status of art in the eyes of the reader. Proust’s presentation of his Narrator’s ‘fascination’ and pleasure at their ‘rainbow-loveliness’, forces the reader to consider asparagus with unfamiliar and attentive appreciation, conveying the idea that art can uncover the overlooked beauty of the mundane. Though Theo reveals a far more cynical view of ordinary life as a ‘sinkhole of hospital beds, coffins and broken hearts’ Tartt conveys the similar belief in art’s capacity to create a ‘rainbow-edge’ of beauty between our perceptions and the harshness of reality. In the most

    Read More

  • Renaissance Art Parmigianino

    1033 Words  | 3 Pages

    This painting has deviated from the standard Renaissance model in that it goes beyond depicting subjects and scene, and employs exaggerated form, color emphasis, abnormal planar depiction, and visual directionality. The aspects of this painting have become the embodiment of the story told and the characters there held. The artist has used various techniques of color, line, and juxtaposition in order to portray an idea which supersedes the sum of its parts, and thereby leads the viewer through a thought.

    Read More

  • Psychoanalysis, Cinema, and Symbolism

    665 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey discusses the relationships amongst psychoanalysis (primarily Freudian theory), cinema (as she observed it in the mid 1970s), and the symbolism of the female body. Taking some of her statements and ideas slightly out of their context, it is interesting to compare her thoughts to the continuum of oral-print-image cultures.

    Read More

  • Marxist Aesthetics and Enlightenment Movements: An Analysis

    812 Words  | 2 Pages

    The aesthetic form may be “tentatively define[d] as the result of the transformation of a given content (actual or historical, personal or social fact) into a self-contained whole,”. Art, when created in accordance to the aesthetic form, is the channeling of an experience into a subjective format, i.e. a novel, a painting, a piece of music, or any of the many different art forms. The reality of an event is translated into the chosen medium, and in this sublimation of the event, it is modified in accordance to the “demands of the art form” and the subjective perspective of the individual. The re-presentation of this event serves to “invoke the need for hope- a need rooted in the new consciousness embodied in the work of art”. When an event or object becomes the subject of a piece of art, it is necessarily changed according to the restrictions of the art form, artist, and veiwer. This change creates a new reality in where the event may take on a new meaning, thus challenging the original content of the event. This meaning is further influenced by subjectivity of the

    Read More

  • Film Analysis Of The Phantom Of The Opera

    1181 Words  | 3 Pages

    Horror is one of the major genres for silent movie produced under Hollywood studio system during 1920s. American filmmakers had gone on exploring the classical Hollywood style, linking technique to clear storytelling because many foreign audiences had been cut off from the Hollywood product during the war (Thompson 58). The Phantom of the Opera (Julian, 1925) exemplifies the classical Hollywood style and represents the class differences characterized by a beautiful woman and an ugly “phantom” in the movie. In this paper, I will particularly analyze one of the famous scenes from the phantom of The Phantom of the Opera (Julian, 1925) – the “unmasking” scene.

    Read More

  • Haunting Essay

    777 Words  | 2 Pages

    Movies like “Haunting in Connecticut” or “The Grudge” are fairly well-known and it is understood that they revolve around the concept of hauntings. Hollywood makes hauntings out to be nothing more than a vengeful spirit out for blood, however hauntings are so much more than that. In order to better understand the concept of a haunting and in turn to better understand the local legend of Gibbs Bridge, a firm grasp of exactly what traits a haunting encompasses is essential. The book Visions Apparitions Alien Visitors by Hilary Evans clearly states what the characteristics of haunting consists of in chapter 1.7. She says, “Hauntings are characterized by the place where they are seen which they appear to frequent.” (Evans, 98). Evans points out

    Read More

  • Imagery Pattern of Clouds in the Portrait of an Artist by James Joyce

    937 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce is widely recognized by New Critics as one of the greatest novels of its age for its aesthetic artistry. In the Portrait, a powerful autobiographical novel of bildungsroman, commonly known as a coming-of-age story, that follows the life of Irish protagonist Stephen Dedalus, Joyce portraits his momentous transition to adulthood as a passage of psychological struggle towards his ultimate philosophical awakening and his spiritual rebirth as an artist. Most visibly in Chapter Four of the novel, Stephen Dedalus, after the denial of his own priesthood, goes on to seek his artistic personality through his secluded journey amongst a myriad of natural elements. Dramatizing the Stephen’s progression towards his artistic revelation, Joyce deployed numerous image patterns that together insinuate the spiritual transformation of Stephen Dedalus into an “impalpable imperishable being” out of the earthly body of which he is composed of (Joyce 108). Specifically, Stephen’s intellectual transfiguration is largely connected with the symbolic connotations of the clouds depicted throughout his journey, which alludes to his transcending soul, wafting across the celestial heaven yet hovering intimately close to the earth that he belongs.

    Read More

  • Ralph Blakelock Moonlight Essay

    1212 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is also possible to sense some dissolution in the Moonlight. The portrait indicates a nocturnal landscape that somehow completes a part of the chronicle from his personal life and struggle. It is also easy to relate the portrait to the artist’s personal struggle with the coherence of the landscape, with main focus being the artist’s sense of crisis that subjectively attempted to explain his disenchanted history.

    Read More

  • Roman Polanski's Repulsion

    1238 Words  | 3 Pages

    Analysis of an aspect of visual form in the film ‘Repulsion’ In the 1964/65 film ‘Repulsion’ by Roman Polanski, the story is about the conflict between reality and fantasy or sanity and insanity inside the main character’s mind – Carol played by Catherine Deneuve. Therefore the narrative technique of symbolism is used to display visually to the film’s audience what happens to Carol’s mind. In this particular instance, the degeneration of Carol’s state of mind is symbolised.

    Read More

More about Shadow Essay

Open Document