Remembering Jimmie Durham

Jimmie Durham: Drawing

I first became aware of Jimmie Durham's drawings because there was an exhibition of them put on by kurimanzutto. kurimanzutto is a gallery that originally existed nomadically, adapting its form to the spaces needed by the projects it supported. It was dedicated to supporting contemporary art from Mexico, the gallery’s itinerant nature allowed it to organize shows in unconventional places, which in turn freed artists up to experiment with different kinds of projects. The gallery now has a more permanent space in Mexico, a space that for Durham gave him an opportunity to show drawings, which was for him, a chance to show work that he professed to be not very good at. 

The exhibition was composed of drawings made between 1989 and 2020. Many of these drawings sort of looked accidental, or more an exploration of drawing as a form of writing. They record interventions, often made on old discarded papers that had had a previous use and in this way, former narratives were allowed to continue, now read as traces or memories that existed between the cracks of Durham's interventions. 

Jimmie Durham on drawing

Durham states that it is impossible for him to use drawing to imitate reality. but in many ways he  disembles and in fact drawing was something he did throughout his career. It could be argued that he used drawing to record the processes of reality, rather than trying to document its appearance. Durham stated in relation to his drawing activities, “our civilization is basically made of scraps of paper, and we have too many that were used once and then became useless thereafter, as is most of our history, or as we wish it were ”.

Jimmy Durham: Smashing

One day I was in Glasgow visiting my daughter and I had a chance to go and see what was on at the then Glasgow Sculpture Studios. What was on was a film of Jimmy Durham, who was receiving objects given to him in a small office with a big desk. As he took these 'donations', he cursory examined them and then proceed to smash them up.

In his text ‘Creativity and the Social Process’, he stated that ‘our perception of the purpose of art, as we produce it, must be eminently practical’ (1993: p. 69) and that it should be produced in order to help people interpret their world so that they may be better able to change it in positive ways. (Ibid: 71).

Coming across Jimmy Durham in Glasgow was a welcome reminder that art can have a social purpose. Calling your work 'art' should I feel matter, and matter in terms of what sort of civilisation we live within and aspire to. Art I really think, matters and it can create this mattering through the weaving of the various entanglements it finds itself connected to. Hopefully, especially if the art is well made, it can be a transformational portal for those who wish to see the world as a dynamic process of universal creation. I have in a past post written about the etymological roots of our word 'art', pointing out that the Proto-Indo-European root of the word 'art' was the morpheme 'rt', which was associated with the dynamic processes of universal creation. Other words derived from ‘rt’ include right, rhetoric, worth, rite and ritual. 'Rt' was to do with ‘creation’ and ‘beauty’ as well as moral and aesthetic correctness; being concerned with what was 'right'. I always had a sense that Jimmy Durham was also concerned with what was 'right'. 

Jimmie Durham: Self portrait 1986

A 1986 self portrait drawing was made as a cut out outline, attached to it was a mask, supposedly of his own face, with synthetic hair, feathers and shells for ears. Written on his image is a greeting, “Hello I’m Jimmie Durham, I want to explain a few basic things about myself.” “My skin is not really this dark, but I am sure many Indians have coppery skin.” and “Indian penises are unusually large and colorful”.

I'm not sure he actually was of North American Indian heritage, but he definitely used the idea of the Indian to open up territories of thought. That was the thing about Jimmie Durham, you began to think he was one thing and then you decided maybe he wasn't. He often left you in the dark, on purpose and as he did, you wondered what was 'right' and 'wrong' about what was happening. 

Smashing is typical of Durham's critique of Western society and its obsession with the ownership of things. His work is often linked to his commitment to the recognition of Native Americans and the Civil Rights Movement. This initial focus then broadened to become a critical view of the hierarchical systems that govern society as a whole. In 'Smashing' he dressed as a civil servant and sat behind a desk. Then as people come into his 'office' and presented him with their things, he violently and systematically destroys each object. His actions when repeated over and over again, suggested a certain type of bureaucratic brutality, one that has often been employed by Western societies as a process that enables the powers that be to 'get their way'.

I sometimes despair over how our present society is constructing itself, sensing a return to fascism and as that happens there is correspondingly less and less interest in art. But I'm sure Durham also used to despair over whether or not his work ever affected anything or anybody. But when I was watching 'Smashing', I did feel a sense of righteous anger and relief that artists' works are still capable of making statements about what it feels like to be in a world that doesn't feel right. 

I recently read Fremeaux and Jordan's text, 'We are nature Defending Itself' and it is an excellent read if you are despondent and feeling that activism can never succeed when faced with the realities of the wider world. Finding alternative voices is important during a time when one voice seems to dominate everything. I do try hard not to despair and I hope I shall continue to try to find ways of making images that help myself and hopefully others find a more mythic connection with the cosmos, as well as to find glimpses of wonder in the everyday. If my small contribution can keep just a tiny fire burning, then all is not in vain and hope as they say, 'springs eternal'. 

A wing emerging from mud

In memory of Jimmie Bob Durham (July 10, 1940 – November 17, 2021)

 
References:

Durham, J. (1993) Creativity and the Social Process. In Durham, J.A. (ed.) Certain Lack of Coherence: Writings on Art and Cultural Politics, London, Kala Press, pp .69–71

Fremeaux, I. and Jordan, J., (2021) We are 'nature' Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones. Pluto Press. 

See also: 

Definition of art RT

Why do we draw?

What use is art?

Why it matters

Witnesses of the invisible

Perhaps artists are meant to be witnesses of the invisible and that our role in society is to keep a door open to alternative possibilities. For instance, when the Pope died recently it did seem from what was said in his obituaries, that he had valued art as a vehicle that could both transcend boundaries and communicate to a wide audience. 

He also apparently thought that the artist could be a witness and that the work of art is a strong proof that incarnation is possible. I presumed he had believed that an artwork could embody or carry within itself an idea of the spiritual. By doing so, the artwork would then open out a possibility or doorway, through which a person could enter into an embodiment of the divine. Art becoming a passage or encounter, that can help someone to pass on from their every day materiality to a belief in a higher spirituality. 

Hilma af Klint

Georgia Houghton

Our present society does seem in need of a spiritual infusion. Some of the artists that have recently being brought back to our attention and have received critical acclaim perhaps reflect this need. Georgia Houghton was a British artist who, in the 1860s, began to produce automatic drawings, which she claimed were guided by spirits. Her watercolours and coloured pencil drawings are intricate and delicate, including complex geometric patterns interspersed with flower type forms. Although ignored during her lifetime she has recently been brought back into the attention of the art world, because researchers are looking to rebalance the art canon by finding more women artists but there has also been an upsurge in interest in artists that 'dared' to approach the spiritual seriously. Much of this research has been driven by the rediscovery of the work of Hilma af Klint. 

Georgia Houghton: Glory be to God: 1868

Agnes Pelton is another artist who has been re-discovered, her work is though much closer in sensibility to contemporary artists than the work of Houghton. 

Agnes Pelton: Winter 1933

Agnes Pelton: Star Gazer: 1929

I suspect her formal sensibility was as much one in tune with Disney as it was with the work of Madame Blavatsky. Even so her images still resonate as spiritual doorways. 

From Bambi: 1942

Walt Disney developed some totally non figurative scenes for Fantasia and his interests clearly overlap with the interests of several mystics from the time. The saturated colours that were typical of animation at the time and the abstracts were not that far away from those envisioned by Besant and Leadbeter in 'Thought Forms' 

From Fantasia: 1940

From 'Thought Forms' 1905

Lindsay Kokoska contemporary spiritual artist and AI user is typical of a new generation of creators who are seeking to provide art that supports this contemporary need. Although too 'cosmic' and cliched for my own taste, I can understand why her work is popular and it is fulfilling a need in a much more healthy way than the practices of some of the new wave religious movements or a return to the re-establishment of the old values of the Abrahamic religions, the followers of which are still creating havoc right across the world.  

Lindsay Kokoska

Kokoska's work is also inspired by visions of Quantum Entanglement and she creates immersive environments, within which you might practice yoga or meditate. 

Lindsay Kokoska

The recent Bodyscapes exhibition in Barcelona is an example of how a contemporary sensibility is developing in relation to these issues.

Christy Lee Rogers

Bodyscapes at the Load Gallery, looked at how artists approach the body not as an object, but as a mutable environment shaped by experience and emotions but perhaps more importantly it focused on artists using new technology and those providing immersive experiences. I was reminded of our historic use of glowing stained glass art within dark churches and the need to make candle lit images in caves.

Christy Lee Rogers

There is a tendency to poo poo these types of responses to our contemporary world as being naive but I'm personally reassured that at least there is an attempt to develop ways of working that acknowledge a spiritual need. I also think that it is no accident that all the artists in the Bodyscapes exhibition were like Hilma af Klint and Georgia Houghton women. The hard to acknowledge fact in the centre of this is for myself, a realisation that AI will become more and more present in every aspect of our lives. In this case it is AI that is driving the imagery of artists such as Lindsay Kokoska. It is reaching out into all of the cosmic imagery available and checking out at what speed to project movement, what sorts of colours to ensure a spiritual experience and as it does, whatever information is collected together is digitally remembered, so that if I wanted to, I too could access AI and ask for it to provide me with cosmic imagery designed to tap into our emotive need for spiritual nourishment. Is this the future? Will we in time simply ask an invisible interface to provide us with a spiritual experience and lo and behold, there it will be, all ready for us to step into? Is this too what we need to witness as artists?

The original people who have inhabited Australia for thousands of years have their own answer to a need for cosmic imagery. If you stare at the night sky long enough, you may begin to see what they saw. Especially if you live in the southern hemisphere where the stars cluster together with a magnificence never glimpsed in northern skies. 

The Emu and the Milky Way

One of the most familiar sights in the Southern night sky is the Milky Way, its dark body stretches the length of our awareness of the galaxy we belong to. In the stories of the original inhabitants of Australia, this shape is that of a gigantic Emu. The sky for them is not just a place for stars but is a reflection of the Earth, it holds stories and astronomical observations that remind the peoples that can communicate with it, of astronomical phenomena like eclipses, practical guidance for living such as the differences in climate associated with changes in the year and even as a map to guide directions for travel; these ancient knowledge systems being far more sophisticated that we often imagine.

An Aboriginal tale tells a story of the rage of the Brolga bird, who one day during an argument with emu over who's chicks were the most beautiful, in a temper picked up and hurled emu's egg into the sky. In those days the sky was the home of the cloud man and emu's egg smashed into his wood pile and as it did, it burst into flames, throwing light and warmth down to the earth below and the cloud man has let it burn ever since. We now call that old wood pile the sun. In such a tale everyday things are transformed into cosmic events, the more sophisticated we think we are, the less some of us see such moments of wonder, but if we are to stay attuned to the cosmos that surrounds us, we need to keep our minds open to alternative possibilities

See also:

Embrace insignificance 

Drawing and spirituality

Diagrams: Visualising the invisible

Michael Kenny: Drawings for Easter

AI and drawing

On AI and disegno

Drawing with light

Bill Viola

Para-scientific visions and Rayonism

Lindsa

Drawing as research methodology

Overlapping areas of drawing research

I have been using drawing as research for some time and the process has gradually moved from using drawing as a research method, whereby I gather information and test out its implications in terms of what it can communicate, to using drawing as a more comprehensive research methodology.

Drawing has become integrated into the conceptual framework of my research and if I look back on this journey, it is the writing I undertook for the book 'Collective and Collaborative drawing in Contemporary Practice' for Cambridge Scholars publishing, that allowed me to think through how I used drawing both as a research method and as a research methodology. 

In the chapter I wrote for Cambridge Scholars, 'Drawing as a tool for shaping community experience into collective allegory', I set out to show how five related but separate drawing methodologies could be examined with regard to their capacity to foster different types of visual understanding. Traditional objective drawing was looked at in relation to its ability to not only document what was seen but as a method of conversational engagement, as well as a way of getting people to look again at what was very familiar to them. Drawing as imaginative play and image generation, was explored in relation to how visual narratives could be told and personal ideas expressed. Architectural illustration and associated technical drawing skills were examined for their potential uses as envisioning tools and as instruments for the communication of concrete realities. Map making was opened out as a tool for enabling effective community ownership of both real and imagined events, and as a way of ensuring location and orientation were embedded into an understanding of environment and place. Finally I looked at how all these various approaches could be brought together within large scale narrative drawings, that were designed around bent perspectives. I have since then been thinking much more about the role of the diagram as a way to shape our thinking, and how perceptual recording of visual experiences can demonstrate a more phenomenological understanding of our place in the world. The more approaches to drawing taken, the more I believe an intuited and nuanced understanding of the various subject matters carried by drawing can be developed. For instance my interest in how drawing can be used to visualise interoceptual experiences, can be linked to both a formal understanding of how a drawing communicates and the concept of embodied energy flows, as well as how non European understandings of embodied health can be integrated into developing drawing as a way to foster wellbeing.

The initial focus is for myself always on the visual (the drawing), however, these blog posts in particular have also allowed me to consider the broader implications and contexts of my drawing processes.

Drawing is so rich in its approaches to carrying ideas that I often find that I'm sliding together or overlapping various methodological layers. For instance the use of the insert.

Richard McGuire: 'Here'

Richard McGuire inserts frames within frames, stretching the conventions of the graphic novel, in order to develop a rich layering of time. This convention can though also be used to suggest another possibility, or to show a detail, as it enables an image to contain further information that stands alone and yet is always also related to the main concept.  

Cosmic tableware

For instance when I was developing ideas for tablecloths and tableware, such as the image above of a ceramic moon cheese dish and accompanying bowls, with black hole and stars tablecloth, I could put several aspects of the idea together in one image, in such a way that it also referenced the Grattan catalogues out of which my mother used to use to sell stuff to the neighbourhood, back in the 1960s. I began by putting these different items into frames, but then dropped them. They are in fact invisible, but still there. This all seems pretty obvious, but it was only when I put my thoughts together in this way that people 'got it' and I could then see if they wanted to proceed with supporting the idea. 

A map carries very different information. But it doesn't always have to be like an ordinance survey map. 

Map of Chapeltown: Pen and Ink on Fabriano roll.

This map of my locality, Chapeltown, was drawn by myself in order to communicate issues about how the streets are used as well as to show how large open spaces are adjacent to the densely populated streets. Bent perspectives also allowed me to bring into focus certain psychologically important moments, thus helping the viewer become engaged in different levels of attention. 

Idea for furniture/game

The map was later used as an idea embedded into a table type object that had a variety of purposes including being a space on which I would put an old fish tank that would be used as a container for electroplating the objects that would be moved around on its surface. (Only by following the link at the bottom of this post will this make sense.)

You can see that as a researcher I do have a problem. Research is supposed to begin with a clear understanding of how the methodology will be used, I should be able to draw on relevant theories related to visual methods and show how they will aid myself and others in a deeper understanding of my specific research topic. I tend instead to find that the drawings emerge from a muddle of doing and thinking and material conversations, only beginning to frame themselves up as coherent constructs, about halfway through their gestation. The table/map/game above was not thought through beforehand, it just emerged and only later could I see that it brought together several different strands of my thinking and once about in the studio, it then becomes another thing that can suggest itself as a component within something else, in the case of the table type object, this idea wasn't even being thought about at the time the initial map drawing was being made.

I'm now working making drawings with patients that I meet and talk to in a local hospital. I'm aware that at some point there will be a need to analyse not just the visual content of the drawings made, but also a need to reflect on the processes of creation, the contributions made by participants and the potential meanings embedded within the artworks made and how these are understood by the participants. Although I shall attempt to draw these things out and present them as a type of data, I am very aware that part of the process of my image gestation relies on an approach that encourages serendipity as an essential tool.

Another aspect of research methodology is interpretation. I should consider the drawings within the larger context of the research, perhaps drawing on participant reflections on the process, as a way to begin an engagement with a more objective awareness of the relationship between the languages of drawing and how artwork is embedded within wider social practices.  I might highlight the sub-group pre-occupation of being an artist and the related vocabulary I use to describe my work to others, and how this may manifest itself in an unequal power relationship with participants. This could enable me to highlight the way that discourse (all the languages in use, visual, written and verbal) shapes an understanding of the situation, influences social relations but hopefully also contributes to change, all of which could be part of a critical discourse analysis of this drawing led project.

For example: could I consider how my drawings could be used as a way to explore social representations, considering how participants might use the drawings made to express their perspectives and how these representations might be used to communicate with others. However, it is sometimes hard to summon up the energy to do this, especially as I am actually doing these things with real people; to then add another layer which is to document it all happening and to reflect on it, requires another burst of energy that I'm not sure I have.

My research methodology should hopefully embrace all these different things and allow for a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the visualisation of interoception and how others use it to understand the world. It should also have a specific theoretical perspective, a lens through which to understand the stuff I'm doing, something to guide my research and provide a framework for interpretation. However, my mind is like a butterfly, flitting and dancing all over the place, one minute I'm acting like a shaman and the next like a neurologist. Hopefully my approach can reveal insights that might not be accessible through traditional research methodologies, but I might have to give up trying to think that I can validate the trustworthiness of my findings, by using the approach that I take. I am in reality looking at a form of poetry as research, an approach that has to accept a lack of scientific validation. The muddle of entanglements that my work emerges out of, is I feel a more realistic situation than the supposedly 'objective' frameworks that are used within 'normal' research, art not being science, but it can be part of a communication process that leads to participants greater self awareness and a heightened feeling of wellbeing.

My current work also uses related but separate drawing methodologies, each one fostering a different type of visual understanding. Traditional objective drawing is used to communicate certain aspects of the situation that people may find themselves in. Rough sketches can be made alongside written notes in a notebook and a more technical drawing produced using Illustrator software much later. 

Wheelchair rough sketch

Wheelchair drawn in Illustrator 

For instance I may draw someone's wheelchair, or the bed they are in, their crutches or the way they sit or stand. Sometimes this is used to establish a narrative framework out of which other stories may emerge. In one case the drawing of a wheelchair was gradually faded out in subsequent drawings because the participant did not want to be defined as a wheelchair user. Figurative drawing has an ability to not only document what was seen but it can also act as a method of conversational engagement. 

A notebook drawing made as a reminder that someone could only move one arm

Drawing as imaginative play and image generation, is used to find visual languages to express what is not visible. For instance the level and type of pain someone is experiencing, or the emotional feelings that accompany an awareness of the situation someone finds themselves in. 

From a series of drawings trying to define how someone feels about their pain

Illustration as a drawing method is used to develop images that represent important symbolic issues for participants, for instance someone who used to be a very fit runner, wanted to show how that aspect of their lives still resonated with their current view of themselves and the image of an 'inner runner' was drawn as they mentioned it. The initial sketch made during a conversation was then used as a stimulus for the later image that was drawn using watercolour washes alongside pen and ink drawing and then scanned into Photoshop and finalised as a digital print. 

Initial note of a past running history

Looking for the inner runner: Worked up drawing, composed within Photoshop

Fragments of conversational story can be collected together as visual notes, then used later to stimulate the construction of a more powerful image. 

Recording a story

Recomposing some of the fragments in watercolour

Architectural illustration and associated technical drawing skills have been used as wider envisioning tools, to enable the communication of for instance how the resultant images could be embedded into an architectural setting, or put together as an exhibition. Body mapping has ensured that location and orientation of pain is clearly expressed as to its location within the body. 

Locating pain in relation to sitting in a wheelchair for a long time

Diagrams have been used to gain an idea of how the issues being unearthed are effecting wider narratives and charts, graphs and scales are used for representing certain aspects of pain visually, when having conversations with patients. 

The interoceptual body embedded into the world

All these various approaches can be brought together within large scale narrative drawings, or drawings for animation, and in particular I have become more and more aware of how drawing can demonstrate a phenomenological understanding of experience. The materiality of some drawings often giving a first clue as to how the image will need to be developed, something that can only work if the possibilities are 'listened to' and intuitively grasped, a process that is often more of a muddle than a research tool.

A pain chart, designed to help visualisation

The pain chart above is drawing in its most data holding form and like the overlapping areas of drawing research diagram that opens this post, is a constantly being updated thing. Each and everyone of these approaches, can become a research methodology, but when first used the approach may simply be a method. The slipping and sliding between methods and methodologies is a sort of research game that should I know be taken seriously, but as a maker I also see that all drawings start with a method and gradually as you become more and more involved with what that method can do, it becomes a methodology, but perhaps more intuitive than rational. 

 

Animation landscape in development

The landscape above is an attempt to develop a more mythic image, one that tries to tap into my feelings about how bodies both inhabit landscapes and become them, whilst the image below, is a totally intuitive attempt to add to the image banks surrounding wheelchair use. The language applied to wheelchair use is usually associated with people being 'grounded'  or 'held down' by being disabled and I wanted to find a more mythic, uplifting image. You need to look at it closely before you see it. This is a research methodology that uses juxtaposition as an image development tool and that adopts a perspective that prioritises intuition and dreams.

Coda

Since putting up this post I have read Derek Sayer's book, 'Making Trouble: Surrealism and the Human Sciences'. In this small book he reminds us that the Surrealists always insisted that their various practices were instruments of knowledge, rather than an artistic movement.  In their challenge to scientific rationality, a privileged Western European research method that they believed had led directly to the First World War, they developed ways of working that stepped outside of many of the research methodologies that I have been considering in the body of this post. At one point in the book, Sayer says this of the Surrealists and their fellow travellers; I paraphrase, "None would have been seen dead following the painting-by-numbers recipe for knowledge production that is recommended by the United Kingdom's national funding agency for research in the social sciences." 

He sets out the questions applicants for research grant funding need to consider and finds it curious that the ESRC expects so many things to have been thought through before beginning research. The fact that research should uncover the unforeseen, originate new hypotheses and celebrate the serendipity component of life seems to have been lost. For those hoping to receive the 'blessings of serendipity' as he puts it (p.4), one needs to cultivate the 'receptive eye' (ibid) and that research should upset preconceptions and expectations. Sayer also reminds us of the Shandean Method, which is not a method, but of which there is a graphic depiction of in Book VI, Chapter XL of Tristan Shandy.

From Tristan Shandy by Laurence Sterne

Sterne approached the writing of his wonderful book in this way, 

"That of all the several ways of beginning a book that are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident that my own way of doing it is the best - I'm sure it is the most religious, - for I begin with writing the first sentence, - and trusting to Almighty God for the second."

See also:

Drawing as research

In praise of verbs

Electroplating as drawing

Whether or not to use theory

More theories about drawing

Signs of life in flowing line drawings

Shadow drawing

When we were children we all at one time or another tried out shadow drawing. I've reflected on several issues associated with this activity a few times already, but perhaps not quite got down to the essence as to why this way of drawing is so magical.

How to create shadow creatures

There is a wonderful moment when you put your hands together and begin making shapes in front of a direct light source, a moment when the shadow formed begins to look like the creature you had in your head. Hands become a bird flying or a dog's head or a rabbit, but at the same time, the shadow belongs to you. It is an extension of yourself that stretches out into the world, the shadow is both of you and something that you are trying to represent.
Some time ago I wrote and illustrated a short story, whereby a creature tried to cut away its shadow. It is a common story often about someone who tries to escape their dark side, or their subconscious selves, usually with disastrous consequences. Hans Christian Andersen's "The Shadow." and 'The Fisherman and His Soul' by Oscar Wilde are typical examples.

Reattaching a Shadow, Peter Pan, Disney Studios, 1953

I first came across the idea as a boy on going to see Peter Pan; Disney's animated film enchanted me and after rewatching after many years, it still does.

The shadow has always fascinated me as someone who draws, because it is mythically part of drawing's history, as well as giving us physical information, such as where light is coming from, shadows can be used to construct a psychological context. Whenever we see shadows we “read” them and their very ambiguity can add drama or existential weight to the situation.

Rembrandt: Self portrait

By casting most of his face in shadow, Rembrandt suggests that he possesses a deeply complex personality, one that is hard to read, but powerful in its very ambiguity.

William Collins "Rustic Civility"

William Collins' painting "Rustic Civility", portrays the landowner only by the shadow he casts, suggesting that land ownership, casts a shadow over all who live on lands that are owned by others.

The cast shadows of tall buildings

When walking in the street we are very aware of the shadows cast by tall buildings, and feel cold as the sun is blocked from our view. If something is large enough to cast its shadow over us we can feel dominated or dwarfed by the presence of something so much bigger than ourselves. Conversely Lin Yutang stated, "When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set"; an aphorism that seems very apt at the moment. In fact the dictionary definition of to cast a shadow over something is "to spoil a good situation with something unpleasant".

I pointed out earlier that shadows are interwoven with the mythic history of drawing itself. Image making according to Pliny, began with tracing an outline around a man’s shadow. This act was to lead eventually to the art of painting. He goes on to then describe how three dimensional modelling began and he states that modelling portraits from clay was first invented by Butades, a potter. Pliny states that Butades invented this new art so that his daughter could remember the face of her lover, who was about to set off on a long journey. He drew in outline on the wall next to him the shadow of his daughter's lover. Then he carefully pressed clay around the interior of this outline and made it into a relief.  The emotive nature of the situation is embedded in that first shadow drawing, the painful moment of a lover’s departure is located in an image that sits between love and loss. Eros and Thanatos, the life and death instincts, attached to the shadow from its very inception as an aid to drawing.   

Victor Stoichita in 'A Short History of the Shadow', points out the symbolic connection between “shadow, soul and a person’s double.” and goes on to state that ”this would indicate that the result of the collaboration between the potter and his daughter was the symbolic creation of a ‘living’ double, a surrogate figure difficult to understand without visualising the ritual actions we exert over it.” (The portrait was eventually taken to a temple and put on display there.)

Joseph-Benoît Suvée would make a painting of Pliny's thoughts about the invention of painting, this time though it is Butades' daughter tracing around the shadow of her loved one.

Joseph-Benoît Suvée, Butades or the Origin of Painting, 1791.

What this tracing around shadows is doing though is to create surrogates of real things and this creates a particular situation, whereby copies of reality start to become more substantial than reality itself. Butades' daughter's lover may be lost at sea, but his portrait could be seen for many years afterwards hanging in the temple. This situation is further complicated when we look at Plato's shadow metaphor. In his metaphor of the cave, he points out that we never actually see reality, only shadows of it. We are therefore forgetful of what reality is, and can confuse the real with the virtual, and in doing so we lead shadow lives of illusion. 

The image of how to create shadow creatures that I used to open this post, reminded me of how ancient and deep rooted is our relationship with other animals. Shamanic traditions include the harnessing of animal spirits as guides or messengers, and the shadow forms of animals, cast by humans are easily made by the light of a fire at night in a cave. Moving human shadows when seen alongside and cast over the top of some of the earliest painted images of animals, must have seemed as if they were interacting with those images, as well it seeming that forms were morphing from human to animal. I can still remember when I was a small child my grandfather making shadow creatures, and how magical the transformation of hands into animals seemed. I suspect there were artist shadow makers in neolithic times, who were very adept at casting the shadow forms of various animals and humans in iconic poses, onto the walls of caves. If only I could have been a fly on the wall and could watch, as they acted out ancient mythic scenarios in their shadow play.

As I weave these various threads together, it becomes clear that shadows are deeply significant and in their very insubstantiality in comparison to the things that they are cast from, they become like ghosts or spirits. Perhaps they gave to human beings their first way of visualising such things, after all, the dead can still cast a shadow and as the earth moves around the sun, that shadow will continue to move, even though the body will lie still. 

Sometimes shadows don't look like what casts them. The drawing above being a playful account of what was at one time a grudge match. 

Sometimes an image is itself meant to exist as a  shadow or ghost, the one below of my father mowing, was made in response to him dying of a stroke as he cut the lawn. He has always been able to cast a shadow in the form of a presence often felt in times of stress or difficulty, his critical gaze still falling on me as a long dark shadow, even as I type these words. 

Ghost mower

Shadows and related phenomena remind us of the uncanny and a world of 'the other', but being so 'everyday', they also remind us of the fact that these things are always with us. 

Reference:

Victor Stoichita (1997) A Short History of the Shadow London: Reaktion Books

See also:

Arvak  A short story

Shadows and the magic of transformation

Articulated collage and shadow play

Tone and emotional value

The vignette

Images as ghosts