Shadow art, paper art
Mar. 30th, 2023 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellerSince all this talking about silhouette art is somehow, unplannedly, evolving into a little series:
Part 1, Shadow theater, the process
Part 2, Papercuts and storytelling
In this third part, I will be discussing some art that inspired me on a personal level. I don't claim this assortment to be complete in any way - I have no background in cultural history, so all this is just random stuff I encountered along the way (and most of it as a kid), ranging from prehistoric cave art over children's picture books and classic silhouette film to modern art installments - with a clear focus on art that's easily accessible to someone growing up in northern Europe. I decided to leave out pure music, literature, and storytelling without a shadow and/or paper art component, in order to have at least a bit of a common theme.
Also, this list needs to come with a disclaimer: I'm not an art critic. I am, in fact, one of the least art-enthusiastic people on this planet. I'm that person who doesn't listen to music more than ten minutes a day, doesn't read many books, doesn't watch movies, and, during a museum visit, doesn't care about all that painted canvas and just waits for the group to move on to the cafeteria. Uncultured and art-immune. You know the type. (The irony of simultaneosly being one of the people who produce much more art than the average human - and in different art forms - though virtually everybody would be much better suited to the task, has not eluded me.) Of course, there's also an advantage: the instances in which art actually worked on me can be counted... not quite on one hand, but you get the idea - and I remember all of them clearly.
Baby mobiles!
Arguably my first exposure to both "paper art" and (probably unintentionally) "shadows" were the baby mobiles I had in my room when I was very young indeed. I had two of them. One was built by dad (with paper, wires, and yarn) and consisted of geometrical shapes. I learned very early that these, when they rotate in the slight breeze from an open window, throw differently shaped shadows! (If you're wondering if this early exposure to projections also led to my current geometry-involving career, you may be correct.) The other one had birds... Australian birds, because apparently Dad's pen friend in Australia had sent a care package for the baby. Anyway - I loved those!
Shadow play!
Mom did that with her hands. Nothing more elaborate than the classic 'deformed rabbit' level, but still fascinating. Also, this is probably one of the earliest art forms. As soon as they had fire, I'm sure prehistoric parents did something like 'deformed mammooth' for their babies. (Archaeology side note: check out this scientific publication about possible early shadow theater. "As a result, we suggest that Mesolithic storytelling might have been entangled with ritual practices and accompanied by performances that resemble traditional shadow theatre." - no surprise here. This art form is old old old.) Early art brings me to...
Prehistoric cave art!
I actually got to see a lot of that. The most famous location, the Altamira cave, is closed to the public (for preservation reasons) but they built a copy of the entrance part of the cave, which then can be visited by tourists. We were there on family summer holidays - I was also still very young (four or five, maybe?) and it was super cool. I loved the drawings - not just because they're old and therefore historically relevant, but also (and mainly!) because they're good drawings. However, the most impressive cave art I've seen was in a lesser-known place in France. (I forgot the name because I was very young when we were there.) The thing is - when they do prints of those animals on a cave wall in magazines or books, they usually show them frontally with frontal lighting, which makes them... pretty normal-looking animal drawings. (If they sometimes look weirdly distorted, that's not because the artist couldn't draw, but because they were supposed to be viewed from below, the surface was curved, and the photo was taken from the wrong angle and/or the wrong distance, which is good for documentation purposes but artistically super bad.) In that French place, we got a demonstration of how the pictures were really supposed to be looked at. Our tour guide was a very enthusiastic young man, and while I didn't understand what he said (it was all in French, which I did not speak yet), he demonstrated for us! He had some kind of artificial torch (complete with flickering effect) and walked the kind of path that people would have taken to get deeper into the cave, and... SHADOWS! Like - MOVING SHADOWS! Suddenly, natural rock ledges turn into legs, and the animals are RUNNING! Towards us! WAHHHHHH! That... punched me in the gut - and it was really the first time in my life I had such a strong reaction to art. (Thank you, unknown tour guide.) I later learned that the incorporation of shadows and shadow movement is actually a pretty common feature in European cave art, but this performance caught me completely unawares. (I mean, it was a very realistic simulation of being trampled by a herd of... something extinct, I guess. More beautiful than scary, though. Really difficult to describe.) Also: whoever painted that cave was a stone age artistic genius.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar!
Yes, I'm really talking about the picture book by Eric Carle. Nothing to do with shadows, but it sure is paper art! I love the collage style - in fact, I had an art print of one of the pictures in that book (the one in the beginning, with the egg on a leaf) hanging on the wall until the ink faded too much. Also, this was definitely the first time I encountered a storytelling style that included not just text and pictures but a tactile component. Wiggling my fingers in those holes was, clearly, a formative experience. I've discovered that I like stories better when there's something to touch, and I often use elements like that in my performances.
Javanese shadow theater!
They had regular performances in a local museum. (Incidentally, this museum also introduced me to gamelan music. YAY!) Mom had this weird habit to go and look at old pottery shards. Baby!Eller did not (and Grown!Up!Eller does not) share the fascination. (Yes, history is important and needs to be preserved. No, that doesn't make old pots any more fun to look at...) Instead, Baby!Eller had Mom drop her off at those performances. I didn't understand much of the stories (though I recognized them later when I got into reading about mythology) but I fell in love with the medium anyway.
Papercut portraiture!
I talked about this yesterday. I was impressed when I saw it, and I'm still impressed whenever I see it, because I cannot do it. I'm not bad at paper manipulation, and I can generate nice-enough pictures, but getting a real person right? That requires micrometer-level precision, because the human brain is extremely sensitive when it comes to facial recognition, and I don't think I'll ever have that much control over the scissors.
Johanna Beckmann!
There are actually several artists I like in the genre of Scherenschnitt book illustration, but my favorite is Johanna Beckmann (who also drew and wrote books and - very German - practiced porcelain painting, which is clearly its own genre). I have to say her books suck, but she was one of the most important Jugendstil book illustrators, and she made some fantastic fairy tale illustrations. I guess my favorite papercut of hers is The Twelve Brothers, which manages to make a central composition interesting. (No easy feat, that!) She did some interesting botanical papercut illustration (a weird artistic decision unless you're really into radishes), too.
Hans Christian Andersen's papercuts!
I talked about those yesterday, too. Andersen produced many, many papercuts throughout his storytelling career. On their own, they may not look very impressive when compared to the kind of papercut illustration you see in books - but, remember, it's a whole world of difference whether you do your work at home, with as much time as you want, or whether you do it as part of a performance. Andersen was doing most of his cuts while telling stories. Most of his mental focus would have been on the mood of his audience, on restructuring the story accordingly, and on other aspects of his performance. You don't get 'polished'-looking paper artwork that way! It's still obvious the guy had really good technique, and, most importantly, a great eye for composition.
Lotte Reiniger!
Another one I mentioned yesterday. Please, just watch this 13-minute film. It's Cinderella, "told by a pair of scissors on a screen", indeed. XD With new music by Karim Al-Zand. (There are several new scores for the film, but this is decidedly my favorite version.)
As I've also mentioned, the interesting aspect in terms of shadow theater is that it cites the classical storytelling technique of live paper cutting but, obviously, expands the genre in revolutionary ways. In a live version, of course, anything you cut out is not running off on its own - and it's not possible to have this leel of detail. Actually, from a purely technical standpoint, the whole thing is crazy. To make the characters flexible like that, they'd have to consist of tens (hundreds?) of pieces, connected with (probably) wires. As a shadow theater performer, I'm obviously not able to watch this without pondering how I would do it - and concluding that, nope, I don't want to attempt even ten seconds of this. Nopenopenope. It's just not happening - I'm stubborn and persistent, but this is the next level. Also: MAGIC. When I encountered Reiniger's work for the first time, I was not doing shadow theater yet, I was merely enchanted.
Yamashita Kumi!
I actually encountered Yamashita Kumi for the first time when she did a portrait of then-chancellor Angela Merkel by... subtly manipulating the edge of a piece of paper so it gets wavy, and then shining light on it. Now THAT is a fun technique! (When I saw it, I immediately had to try, and failed miserably - despite already having a bit of papercraft experience.) Of course, Yamashita did some other fantastic shadow artwork, too - I think her most famous shadow piece is the chair, which is a wood carving creating a shadow woman sitting in a chair. Anyway, all her stuff is awesome.
...eeek, this is getting long again. I'll stop here.
(I don't own the copyright of anything behind the external links. I have, however, taken care to link only to stuff that looks legally published to the best of my knowledge, and I'm linking it for... educational purposes, I guess, though it feels weird to attach this label to a post of mine.)
Part 1, Shadow theater, the process
Part 2, Papercuts and storytelling
In this third part, I will be discussing some art that inspired me on a personal level. I don't claim this assortment to be complete in any way - I have no background in cultural history, so all this is just random stuff I encountered along the way (and most of it as a kid), ranging from prehistoric cave art over children's picture books and classic silhouette film to modern art installments - with a clear focus on art that's easily accessible to someone growing up in northern Europe. I decided to leave out pure music, literature, and storytelling without a shadow and/or paper art component, in order to have at least a bit of a common theme.
Also, this list needs to come with a disclaimer: I'm not an art critic. I am, in fact, one of the least art-enthusiastic people on this planet. I'm that person who doesn't listen to music more than ten minutes a day, doesn't read many books, doesn't watch movies, and, during a museum visit, doesn't care about all that painted canvas and just waits for the group to move on to the cafeteria. Uncultured and art-immune. You know the type. (The irony of simultaneosly being one of the people who produce much more art than the average human - and in different art forms - though virtually everybody would be much better suited to the task, has not eluded me.) Of course, there's also an advantage: the instances in which art actually worked on me can be counted... not quite on one hand, but you get the idea - and I remember all of them clearly.
Baby mobiles!
Arguably my first exposure to both "paper art" and (probably unintentionally) "shadows" were the baby mobiles I had in my room when I was very young indeed. I had two of them. One was built by dad (with paper, wires, and yarn) and consisted of geometrical shapes. I learned very early that these, when they rotate in the slight breeze from an open window, throw differently shaped shadows! (If you're wondering if this early exposure to projections also led to my current geometry-involving career, you may be correct.) The other one had birds... Australian birds, because apparently Dad's pen friend in Australia had sent a care package for the baby. Anyway - I loved those!
Shadow play!
Mom did that with her hands. Nothing more elaborate than the classic 'deformed rabbit' level, but still fascinating. Also, this is probably one of the earliest art forms. As soon as they had fire, I'm sure prehistoric parents did something like 'deformed mammooth' for their babies. (Archaeology side note: check out this scientific publication about possible early shadow theater. "As a result, we suggest that Mesolithic storytelling might have been entangled with ritual practices and accompanied by performances that resemble traditional shadow theatre." - no surprise here. This art form is old old old.) Early art brings me to...
Prehistoric cave art!
I actually got to see a lot of that. The most famous location, the Altamira cave, is closed to the public (for preservation reasons) but they built a copy of the entrance part of the cave, which then can be visited by tourists. We were there on family summer holidays - I was also still very young (four or five, maybe?) and it was super cool. I loved the drawings - not just because they're old and therefore historically relevant, but also (and mainly!) because they're good drawings. However, the most impressive cave art I've seen was in a lesser-known place in France. (I forgot the name because I was very young when we were there.) The thing is - when they do prints of those animals on a cave wall in magazines or books, they usually show them frontally with frontal lighting, which makes them... pretty normal-looking animal drawings. (If they sometimes look weirdly distorted, that's not because the artist couldn't draw, but because they were supposed to be viewed from below, the surface was curved, and the photo was taken from the wrong angle and/or the wrong distance, which is good for documentation purposes but artistically super bad.) In that French place, we got a demonstration of how the pictures were really supposed to be looked at. Our tour guide was a very enthusiastic young man, and while I didn't understand what he said (it was all in French, which I did not speak yet), he demonstrated for us! He had some kind of artificial torch (complete with flickering effect) and walked the kind of path that people would have taken to get deeper into the cave, and... SHADOWS! Like - MOVING SHADOWS! Suddenly, natural rock ledges turn into legs, and the animals are RUNNING! Towards us! WAHHHHHH! That... punched me in the gut - and it was really the first time in my life I had such a strong reaction to art. (Thank you, unknown tour guide.) I later learned that the incorporation of shadows and shadow movement is actually a pretty common feature in European cave art, but this performance caught me completely unawares. (I mean, it was a very realistic simulation of being trampled by a herd of... something extinct, I guess. More beautiful than scary, though. Really difficult to describe.) Also: whoever painted that cave was a stone age artistic genius.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar!
Yes, I'm really talking about the picture book by Eric Carle. Nothing to do with shadows, but it sure is paper art! I love the collage style - in fact, I had an art print of one of the pictures in that book (the one in the beginning, with the egg on a leaf) hanging on the wall until the ink faded too much. Also, this was definitely the first time I encountered a storytelling style that included not just text and pictures but a tactile component. Wiggling my fingers in those holes was, clearly, a formative experience. I've discovered that I like stories better when there's something to touch, and I often use elements like that in my performances.
Javanese shadow theater!
They had regular performances in a local museum. (Incidentally, this museum also introduced me to gamelan music. YAY!) Mom had this weird habit to go and look at old pottery shards. Baby!Eller did not (and Grown!Up!Eller does not) share the fascination. (Yes, history is important and needs to be preserved. No, that doesn't make old pots any more fun to look at...) Instead, Baby!Eller had Mom drop her off at those performances. I didn't understand much of the stories (though I recognized them later when I got into reading about mythology) but I fell in love with the medium anyway.
Papercut portraiture!
I talked about this yesterday. I was impressed when I saw it, and I'm still impressed whenever I see it, because I cannot do it. I'm not bad at paper manipulation, and I can generate nice-enough pictures, but getting a real person right? That requires micrometer-level precision, because the human brain is extremely sensitive when it comes to facial recognition, and I don't think I'll ever have that much control over the scissors.
Johanna Beckmann!
There are actually several artists I like in the genre of Scherenschnitt book illustration, but my favorite is Johanna Beckmann (who also drew and wrote books and - very German - practiced porcelain painting, which is clearly its own genre). I have to say her books suck, but she was one of the most important Jugendstil book illustrators, and she made some fantastic fairy tale illustrations. I guess my favorite papercut of hers is The Twelve Brothers, which manages to make a central composition interesting. (No easy feat, that!) She did some interesting botanical papercut illustration (a weird artistic decision unless you're really into radishes), too.
Hans Christian Andersen's papercuts!
I talked about those yesterday, too. Andersen produced many, many papercuts throughout his storytelling career. On their own, they may not look very impressive when compared to the kind of papercut illustration you see in books - but, remember, it's a whole world of difference whether you do your work at home, with as much time as you want, or whether you do it as part of a performance. Andersen was doing most of his cuts while telling stories. Most of his mental focus would have been on the mood of his audience, on restructuring the story accordingly, and on other aspects of his performance. You don't get 'polished'-looking paper artwork that way! It's still obvious the guy had really good technique, and, most importantly, a great eye for composition.
Lotte Reiniger!
Another one I mentioned yesterday. Please, just watch this 13-minute film. It's Cinderella, "told by a pair of scissors on a screen", indeed. XD With new music by Karim Al-Zand. (There are several new scores for the film, but this is decidedly my favorite version.)
As I've also mentioned, the interesting aspect in terms of shadow theater is that it cites the classical storytelling technique of live paper cutting but, obviously, expands the genre in revolutionary ways. In a live version, of course, anything you cut out is not running off on its own - and it's not possible to have this leel of detail. Actually, from a purely technical standpoint, the whole thing is crazy. To make the characters flexible like that, they'd have to consist of tens (hundreds?) of pieces, connected with (probably) wires. As a shadow theater performer, I'm obviously not able to watch this without pondering how I would do it - and concluding that, nope, I don't want to attempt even ten seconds of this. Nopenopenope. It's just not happening - I'm stubborn and persistent, but this is the next level. Also: MAGIC. When I encountered Reiniger's work for the first time, I was not doing shadow theater yet, I was merely enchanted.
Yamashita Kumi!
I actually encountered Yamashita Kumi for the first time when she did a portrait of then-chancellor Angela Merkel by... subtly manipulating the edge of a piece of paper so it gets wavy, and then shining light on it. Now THAT is a fun technique! (When I saw it, I immediately had to try, and failed miserably - despite already having a bit of papercraft experience.) Of course, Yamashita did some other fantastic shadow artwork, too - I think her most famous shadow piece is the chair, which is a wood carving creating a shadow woman sitting in a chair. Anyway, all her stuff is awesome.
...eeek, this is getting long again. I'll stop here.
(I don't own the copyright of anything behind the external links. I have, however, taken care to link only to stuff that looks legally published to the best of my knowledge, and I'm linking it for... educational purposes, I guess, though it feels weird to attach this label to a post of mine.)
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Date: 2023-03-30 11:57 pm (UTC)Similarly, the understanding that pictograms were probably storytelling cues within an oral tradition. Just, incredibly cool, really.
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