page_title: Darkness
section_title: Artistic
hierarchical_section_title: Darkness / Cultural / Artistic
context_page_description: Darkness, the polar opposite of brightness, is understood as a lack of illumination or an absence of visible light.
  Human vision is unable to distinguish color in conditions of either high brightness or very low brightness. In conditions with insufficient light levels, color perception ranges from achromatic to ultimately black.
  The emotional response to darkness has generated metaphorical usages of the term in many cultures.
  Referring to a time of day, complete darkness occurs when the Sun is more than 18° below the horizon, without the effects of twilight on the night sky.
context_section_description: Artists use darkness to emphasize and contrast the presence of light. Darkness can be used as a counterpoint to areas of lightness to create leading lines and voids. Such shapes draw the eye around areas of the painting. Shadows add depth and perspective to a painting. See chiaroscuro for a discussion of the uses of such contrasts in visual media.
  Color paints are mixed together to create darkness, because each color absorbs certain frequencies of light. Theoretically, mixing together the three primary colors, or the three secondary colors, will absorb all visible light and create black. In practice it is difficult to prevent the mixture from taking on a brown tint.
caption: Caravaggio's The Calling of St Matthew uses darkness for its chiaroscuro effects.
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