eller

Part 1, Shadow theater, the process
Part 2, Papercuts and storytelling
Part 3, Shadow art, paper art

The little series continues - in part 3, I've mentioned seeing an animation of running animals in a cave with very old paintings, and I've decided to discuss this topic in a bit more detail... From the artistic perspective. (Art critique of paleolithic cave paintings is not really a thing, I'm afraid - not least because an archaeologist who goes "this cave is boring; I've seen better aurochs drawings" will be fired.) The bad news: I still have no idea which cave it was that I saw as a kid. I don't even remember the type of animal! (I was a little kid; I wouldn't have been able to identify prehistoric fauna.) The good news: a bit of research showed that cave art animation was, indeed, a thing in Very!Ancient!France and Very!Ancient!Spain. (So, I'm not completely misremembering things; good to know.) And it's suuuuper impressive: just imagine being in a cave, in the dark, and suddenly you're surrounded by running animals! (There is, of course, no proof whatsoever there were other aspects beyond the visual, but as a performer, I'd also add some percussion soundtrack as hoofbeat.)

There are actually several examples of this described in literature.

Check out, for example, this very nice paper, Animation in Palaeolithic art: a pre-echo of cinema by Marc Azéma and Florent Rivère. The authors argue that cave art was supposed to convey narrative as well as movement, and they back this up with examples from the Chauvet Cave, the cave system of Lascaux, the Baume Latrone, and several others. (The genre must have been popular!) Most interesting to me is that the authors also discuss the techniques used by those prehistoric artists: interestingly, they had both superimposition and juxtaposition of successive images in their repertoire, and they were able to make quite advanced stop-motion animation, which means they must have known and used the principle of retinal persistence. Consider me impressed... (The authors also discuss another animation technique: a very old thaumatrope. There's also a short (2-minute) video by Marc Azéma, showing pretty neat examples:


...you get the idea.

If you want to see actual shadow art... There seem to be several examples of that as well. On Youtube, I found this very nice 1-minute video of a bison shadow of a decorated rock, in El Castillo cave (Spain):


Whoever made that bison shadow was a really great artist. And that's a shit ton of work that went into the piece...

Have I mentioned that shadow art is really fucking old? Here's an interesting article about the phenomenon, including the reconstruction of the light sources that would have been available to the artists, and how that influences the way the art looks.

So, since I talked about shadow theater yesterday, I thought I'd talk a bit about the underlying traditional craft, Scherenschnitt (papercut), today - especially about the performance aspects of it.

I think you've all seen silhouette art before. Pretty much everyone agrees that papercut art was originally invented by the Chinese (who also came up with paper in the first place), but you know how it is with good ideas: they spread. In northern Europe, this traditional craft focuses mainly on portraiture, fairy tales and folk tales - in fact, at least from the 18th to the 20th century, it was considered the most appropriate form of illustration for traditional tales in Germany. I'm not just interested in Scherenschnitt (the German word for papercut art in this style) as illustration, though - in fact, I consider it a cultural loss to reduce it to that. Making a Scherenschnitt is, and always has been, a performance. The process is usually much more interesting than the results.

The first time I encountered Scherenschnitt as a live performance was as a young child (I was 5 or 6, maybe) at a market stall. Someone was sitting there and doing Scherenschnitt portraits of people, and I guess my parents had a bit of spare money at the time, because they paid the artist to do a portrait of me. (It's still in a picture frame on their wall. This should tell you two things: this is a VeryTraditionalHousehold (TM), and proud parents are proud parents everywhere.) Unfortunately, I don't remember the artist at all, not even if that was a man or a woman (and I'd have to take the picture out of its frame to look at the signature, which is typically on the back because you don't write or draw on Scherenschnitt art), but I remember being fascinated by the process of this person picking up black paper and scissors and... a face - my face - just appearing. I guess I don't need to explain it's extremely difficult to do a recognizable papercut portrait of someone without a preliminary drawing? Anyway, that was magical. Interestingly, in the result, it's visible how fascinated I was: some of you (the ones on access, anyway) have seen photos of the very peculiar 'focused' facial expression Kiddo!Eller had while playing chess. The Scherenschnitt somehow managed to capture exactly that. Baby!Eller was watching carefully.

At that time, of course, I didn't make papercut art. I enjoyed papercraft all right, but... Well. I wasn't the kind of artistic prodigy who would have been able to produce anything like that as a child! First, I had to figure out that I really need to use scissors and knives with my right hand despite being left-handed when it comes to everything else, like writing or drawing. (Yes, I know special scissors for lefties exist. No, my parents bought me those - they don't believe all the superstition about lefties and didn't try to re-train me when they noticed I picked up pens with my left - but leftie scissors don't help. I'm simply not capable of cutting properly with my left hand. It's interesting that cutting and drawing seem to require completely different brain activity despite both resulting in a picture, but there you go.) Also, no one in my family practices the art. (And the only shadow play I was exposed to was Mom shaping rabbits and such with her hands - you know. I got to see 'normal' puppet theater from my grandfather and father but was never really into that...) My first papercut was an ATC I made in 2009:



This is very obviously beginner work. The not-very-clean edges are not only my fault; the unsuitable material (a plain index card!) contributed, but, well. I also did not have that much control yet. Still, I'm quite happy how it turned out - as a first attempt, it's fine. Could have been much worse.

In the following years, I practiced a bit, but I was only able to add more detail on that small format when I actually used 'the good stuff', that is, professional-level papercut paper. This exists for a reason: it's thin enough for fast and easy cutting, but doesn't tear. Much. (I have, of coursed, managed even that... My superpower: destroying paper.) The following are two very classical fantasy-themed ATCs I made in 2015, using both scissors and knives. (In case you were wondering: I don't use any expensive tools for this. My favorite scissors came from the Euro Shop, and I really love break-off cutter knives. The only not-super-cheap tool I own is a Japanese swivel scalpel I wouldn't want to miss.)





These are actually okay-ish: I notice all the ways in which I could have done that better, and I shudder, but I guess all artists do that. LOL (I have somewhat better technique these days, but I haven't made any Scherenschnitt ATCs lately. Should probably do that again at some point...) Anyway... These pictures, unfortunately, were made at home, so no one got to watch the process, which is a total waste if you ask me. I think I have mentioned how the making of this stuff is soooo much more interesting than just pictures? Also: traditionally, it's inextricably linked with storytelling.

A famous example of papercut performance art are the papercuts by Hans Christian Andersen who is (unjustly) mainly known as a writer these days, but who was a storyteller really - his performances involved telling stories while cutting paper pictures. (He started his career at a theater, actually was into singing and acting before he began to write, so it's safe to assume he was extremely good at entertaining an audience!) Of course, having really good stories helped. (I mean, how many films are there of the Little Mermaid alone? I believe they recently made a new one though I haven't watched it yet.) Only the written versions lasted until today, but... From a storyteller standpoint it's really obvious his stories were designed to be told - I'll spare you the structural analysis of Andersen's fairy tales and a discussion of storytelling techniques vs. short-story writing techniques, and the (deliberate) use of colloquial vs. 'literary' language, but Andersen's stuff firmly falls into the first category. Just believe me, I would pay a shit ton of money for an opportunity to watch one of Andersen's performances... (Wrong century, alas.)

Later, as soon as film began to be a thing, silhouette animation also became a thing, especially in Germany - I simply have to mention Lotte Reiniger here, who pioneered that art form (and created the first feature-length animated film, before Walt Disney did, but got a lot less public credit due to being, well, female), but since this is getting long-ish again, I guess I'll save an in-depth discussion for another post. I will note, though, that her famous 1922 version of Cinderella (and, nope, absolutely not a coincidence she did fairy tales, too - people come with cultural backgrounds!) not only involves animated silhouette figures, but also animated silhouette hands cutting silhouette figures. She simulated the effect of hands appearing on a shadow theater screen nicely (and used it for effect!), which means she was absolutely aware of (and likely also personally experienced with) the cutting process itself as a performance technique in storytelling.