Short History Of The Shadow

by Victor I. Stoichita

Overview

Stoichita's compelling account untangles the history of one of the most enduring challenges to beset Western art - the depiction and meanings of shadows. 'Ambitious and a pleasure to read . . . a thoroughly worthwhile book.' - Times Higher Education Supplement

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781861898296
Publisher:	Reaktion Books, Limited
Publication date:	01/01/1997
Series:	Essays in Art and Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Victor I. Stoichita is Professor of the History of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Shadow Stage
2. The Shadow of the Flesh
3. A Shadow on the Painting
4. Around 'The Uncanny'
5. Man and his Doubles
6. Of Shadow and its Reproducibility during the Photographic Era
7. In the Shadow of the Eternal Return References List of Illustrations

Editorial Reviews

In what could be called a meticulous dissection of Robert Louis Stevenson's "I Have a Little Shadow," Stoichita (history of art, Univ. of Fribourg, Switzerland) examines the artistic and intellectual concepts of the "dark spot" and of their effects upon our view of reality. In exhaustive if not exhausting detail, he ranges from Pliny to Plato, from Piaget to photography, from wall painting to Warhol. Black is both the absence of light and all the colors of the rainbow; in comparison, the shadow contains both the reflection of the image and its essential nature. Apart from its philosophical terminology, this is a difficult book; few sentences escape from parenthetical insertion, and one wonders whether this is a reflection of the original or the imposition of the stylistic shadow of the translator. Also, it is surprising that such a scholarly book should lack an index. Still, it seems that what the shadow knows, Stoichita knows as well, and his work will be useful in academic and art libraries collecting for a graduate level.Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York

Library Journal