The Art of Darkness

Darkness is the absence of light. It is a symbol of doom, sadness, depression, ignorance and secrecy. Darkness creates a primordial fear in all of us. It makes animals hide under thickets and into crevices. It makes people retreat to the safety of their homes every night where they can control the intensity. Artists have never been afraid of the dark. Traditionally artists would work to support themselves by day and create at night. They go towards the darkness and use its time and space to illuminate its secrets.

     Kumi Yamashita is an installation artist who uses light to cast shadows from everyday inanimate objects. The surprise happens when the forms of the shadows appear as detailed human figures. Yamashita begins with photographs of real shadows and then detailed sketches to the angle and the intensity of the light source. Her work is based on the tradition of Japanese origami. She bends, folds and assembles the inanimate objects and creates a pattern that will cast a shadow that a real figure could cast. While her shadowy figures represent individuals, ordinary items create small memories or fleeting moments to build a personal story.

     Miroslav Balka is a Polish installation artist. He creates pitch black boxes to explore fear and memory. “How It Is” is an enormous steel box that resembles a shipping container. The steel box is 42 feet high, 32 feet wide and 98 feet long. The box sits above the floor on 7 foot high steel stilts. There is a ramp in front of the box that leads into the interior that appears as a void. The void itself is spray painted with a soft black flocking material that is 10 times darker than black paint. On a side note, the box itself was an engineering feat as the welded panels were prefabricated in a shop and then the whole box was assembled with mechanical fittings in the middle of the Tate Gallery.

     Brassai was a Hungarian writer, sculptor, photographer and filmmaker who rose to fame and critical acclaim in 1930’s France. In 1924 Brassai moved to Paris to work as a writer for a newspaper but on his way to work in the early mornings and late at night he fell in love with the city and decided he must photograph it. In 1933 Brassai published a photo book called “Paris at Night”. Paris at night is a love letter to his new home and it captures the hidden, haunting, dark and quiet side of Paris most people hadn’t seen before. This part of Paris inhabits night workers, down and outs, high society on their way home from fancy events as well as deserted streets, alleys and bistros.

      French-American abstract expressionist artist Louise Bourgeois didn’t work with light or dark, she lived in it. Bourgeois had a lifelong struggle with insomnia due to an abusive father, the death of her mother and the lingering effects of living through the First World War in France. Her sketchbook “Insomnia Drawings” is a series of 220 drawings during a months long battle with insomnia. She felt that sleep was an unattainable paradise and she used her artistic process to soothe herself and create meaning from her sleepless nights.

       Darkness is not a void of emptiness. Darkness can have an optimistic spiritual meaning when artistic creation illuminates its crevices and corners with hope, love, courage and honesty.