Grasping Shadows: The Dark Side of Literature, Painting, Photography, and Film - Hardcover

Sharpe, William Chapman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0190675276 ISBN 13: 9780190675271

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2017

Synopsis

What's in a shadow? Menace, seduction, or salvation? Immaterial but profound, shadows lurk everywhere in literature and the visual arts, signifying everything from the treachery of appearances to the unfathomable power of God. From Plato to Picasso, from Rembrandt to Welles and Warhol, from Lord of the Rings to the latest video game, shadows act as central players in the drama of Western culture.

Yet because they work silently, artistic shadows often slip unnoticed past audiences and critics. Conceived as an accessible introduction to this elusive phenomenon, Grasping Shadows is the first book that offers a general theory of how all shadows function in texts and visual media. Arguing that shadow images take shape within a common cultural field where visual and verbal meanings overlap, William Sharpe ranges widely among classic and modern works, revealing the key motifs that link apparently disparate works such as those by Fra Angelico and James Joyce, Clementina Hawarden and Kara Walker, Charles Dickens and Kumi Yamashita.

Showing how real-world shadows have shaped the meanings of shadow imagery, Grasping Shadows guides the reader through the techniques used by writers and artists to represent shadows from the Renaissance onward. The last chapter traces how shadows impact the art of the modern city, from Renoir and Zola to film noir and projection systems that capture the shadows of passers-by on streets around the globe. Extending his analysis to contemporary street art, popular songs, billboards, and shadow-theatre, Sharpe demonstrates a practical way to grasp the "dark side" that looms all around us.

About this title

About the Author

William Chapman Sharpe is a Professor of English at Barnard College. His previous books include New York Nocturne: The City After Dark in Literature, Painting, and Photography, 1850-1950 (2008) and Unreal Cities: Urban Figuration in Wordsworth, Baudelaire, Whitman, Eliot, and Williams (1990).

Review

"Grasping Shadows is a passionately argued and truly interdisciplinary work of scholarship. Attentive readers will indeed be transformed by this new lens through which to perceive the formal nuances in art and literary narrative." -- Allison Young, Louisiana State University, College of Art Association

"Using literature, art, films, and photographs, Sharpe elucidates why shadows are important, their meanings and how they have changed over time, and why shadows have continued to play such a crucial role in how humans interpret what they see. He presents a typology for shadows and illustrates it with skill. This is a brilliant book. It ranges in inquiry from literature to art-from cave paintings to modern and contemporary works-presenting what one sees and why it is meaningful. Sharpe's analysis of these various art forms is always satisfying. The writing is dense and scholarly, but the result is a book that will prevent readers from ever again taking a shadow for granted. Handsomely illustrated, with many images in color. Summing Up: Essential." --CHOICE

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title (2018)

"This is a significant, thoroughly researched and highly-perceptive study. Its scope, nuanced articulation and broad accessibility identify it as an ideal selection for many types of libraries. ... Highly recommended for many levels of readership." -- Ann C. Kearney, ARLIS/NA Reviews

"Moving deftly between literature, painting, photography, film and cultural history, William Sharpe casts a light on a much overlooked aesthetic and cognitive phenomenon. His nuanced readings of a rich panoply of speaking shadows compels us to rethink what is both ordinary and intangible. At the end of this fascinating journey through the dark side of art we recognize that only with and alongside shadows do things take shape." --Elisabeth Bronfen, University of Zurich

"This is a brilliant book. It ranges in inquiry from literature to art-from cave paintings to modern and contemporary works-presenting what one sees and why it is meaningful. Sharpe's analysis of these various art forms is always satisfying. The writing is dense and scholarly, but the result is a book that will prevent readers from ever again taking a shadow for granted. Handsomely illustrated, with many images in color. ... Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers." --D. Schuyler, CHOICE

"Vision uses shadows for understanding the scene in front of our eyes, but it also goes a long way trying to edit them out, so that we seldom pay attention to them. William Sharpe's masterful book documents how artists tried to rescue shadows from visual oblivion, at the same time bestowing high symbolic significance on them. It's a wonderful and surprising exploration of the interplay between nature and culture." --Roberto Casati, Institut Jean Nicod

"Ranging from literature and art history to photography and film, probing with equal acuity the literal, graphic, and figurative meanings of shadow, Grasping Shadows makes a compelling case for his central contention that all shadows represented in pictures or words either express, point to, complete, or break free of the objects that cast them. As a bonus, this extraordinary book is studded not only with figures but with an astonishing number of color plates." --James Heffernan, Dartmouth College

"A brilliant book on shadows, sure to become a classic. Grasping Shadows is a fascinating, profound and delicate exploration of how evanescence is essential to western art and literature." --Nathalie Cochoy, University of Toulouse

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0190675276
• ISBN 13: 9780190675271
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 440