Shadows and Enlightenment by Michael Baxandall

by Michael Baxandall

In this book, an eminent art historian draws on contemporary cognitive science, eighteenth-century theories of visual perception, and art history to discuss shadows and the visual knowledge they can offer. Michael Baxandall begins by describing the physical constitution and different varieties of shadows. He then sketches the eighteenth-century empirical/nativist debate on the role of shadows in the perception of shape. Next he surveys modern research by cognitive scientists and machine vision workers, explaining how research is divided on the issue of how far and by what means shadows help or hinder perception of shape. Baxandall continues his exploration by recounting a neglected episode of shadow theory, the observations of a group of mid-eighteenth-century French scientists and artists on shadows as related to light and space. Finally he sets these various shadow universes into relation with each other, addressing the special problem of painting shadows, and analyses Chardin's painting The Young Draughtsman, in which shadow painting is both medium and theme. The book includes an appendix that situates and summarizes the shadow system of Leonardo da Vinci, which has had a strong though partly underground influence on thinking about shadows for five hundred years.

Genres: Art, Philosophy

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Art historian who developed the theory of period eye. He worked as a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London as well as teaching at the Warburg Institute and the University of California.

Reviews

[Sean Tatol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Baxandall is one of my favorite art historians, quite probably my favorite, so although I found this to be a letdown I feel compelled to do some apologetics for it. Very little of the book is about art, it's primarily a summary of 1995 scientific theories on how computer eyes process shadow and 17th and 18th century writings on the perception light and shadow. While I can follow the information I'm just not regimented enough in my thinking to internalize any of it, so I eventually starting breezing through. I'm interested in art, and most of this analysis is too rigorously scientific to come in handy for looking at art. Characteristically, Baxandall is aware of this and acknowledges at the end that the visual attention we pay to paintings isn't strictly compatible with this kind of analysis, but on the other hand the fact that this sort of rigorous methodology for seeing was valued in Chardin's time has an integral relationship to the existence of an academic tradition of painting that produced painters such as Chardin, just as da Vinci's polymathic observations on shadow certainly have something to do with his genius as an artist. I would never disparage that kind of rigor, I just know my own limits and don't particularly lament my lack of it either. What's painful is that the final chapter where he finally digresses into some thoughts about painting has some wonderful pages where he brilliantly observes some works and eloquently summates the nature of looking at art so effortlessly that it feels as though he might have done it absent-mindedly. Personally I would have preferred a whole book in that tenor, but that's just me. If I had to levy a real critique it would be that I'm unsure if the book is useful for anyone since it straddles computer science, the history of visual theory, and art so broadly that I imagine it's too specialized for the generalists and too general for the specialists, but I won't presume to know that for others.