Short History of the Shadow (Reaktion Books - Essays in Art and Culture)
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 YorkCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.