From Dawn Till Dusk: Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany
Past exhibition
Information
In a way, the shadow stands at the beginning of art history. In the ancient tradition of Pliny the Elder, it is the daughter of the potter Butades who traces the shadow outline of her lover’s head with a charcoal pencil, thus creating the first image. The famous allegory of the cave by the Greek philosopher Plato, on the other hand, separates the shadow images in the dark cave that obscure reality from the bright light of knowledge and thus the literally shadowy existence from the truly illuminated one. The dubious, potentially sinister aspect accompanied the shadow for centuries before Romanticism discovered its positive dimension and linked the shadow with the psyche. In Adelbert von Chamisso’s fairy tale Peter Schlemihl, for example, the loss of the shadow is equated with the loss of the soul. Even though shadows have played a role in the repertoire of painting since the early modern period, it was not until the 19th century and the invention of photography and film that they became an essential pictorial element.
Installation Views
