Shadows by David Černý

A white area and a missing centerpart of a shadow motives, which is just outlined, raises the question, what happened to the main part of the shadow ? 

The answer is in the historic context of the Carossa Quartier. The blank center is a refection about the untold stories of the people, who were used as forced labour on site during WW II.  While we see an outline of the existence, we notice that the inner self of the shadow is lost forever. With the historic context in mind the art work pushes to bring past and present intellectually together.

The shadows are to be seen as a reference to Art History in its completeness. 

According to the ancient Roman writer Pliny the Elder, both the Egyptians and Greeks take credit for the first picture. Pliny, however, writes that there is agreement that “it began with the outlining of a shadow.” He recounts a story of a young woman from Corinth, the daughter of a potter, who drew the outline of a young man’s shadow on a wall. She was in love with him and traced his profile before he departed on a journey abroad so she could remember him clearly. Her father produced a relief of her portrait, pressing clay into the outline of his silhouette and then firing his copy of the first drawing in a kiln.
According to the legend she invented the art of drawing and her her father invented sculpturing.

The shadows art-work is naturally a strong reference to ancient philosophy and Plato’s writings and reflections on light, form, truth, ideas, reality and the various perceptions of the same.

The Shadow allegory of the Cave is a story from Book VII in the Greek philosopher Plato’s masterpiece “The Republic,” written around B.C.E. 375. It is probably Plato’s best-known story, and its placement in “The Republic” is significant. “The Republic” is the centerpiece of Plato’s philosophy, centrally concerned with how people acquire knowledge about beauty, justice, and good. 

The Allegory is related to Plato’s Theory of Forms, wherein Plato asserts that “Forms” (or “Ideas”), and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality.

Only knowledge of the Forms constitutes real knowledge. In addition, the allegory of the cave is an attempt to explain the philosopher’s place in society.
Plato imagines a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Plato, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to seeing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not constitutive of reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.

Today anthropologists claim, that the main cultural development of the human kind happened the moment the first hominid realized his own shadow on the wall of the cave and understood his ability to replicate his own picture by the use of dark material. They named the development Homo Pictor.

Hans Carossa is seen as a deformed shadow to underline the dichotomic vita of the author who was a celebrity during Nazi times.

Hans Carossa, (born Dec. 15, 1878, Tölz, Ger.—died Sept. 12, 1956, Rittsteig, W.Ger.), poet and novelist who contributed to the development of the German autobiographical novel.

After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Carossa chose the Inner emigration and rejected his appointment to the German Academy of Poetry, but in 1938 he accepted the Goethe Prize of the City of Frankfurt, and in 1941 at the European Poets’ Meeting he was appointed President of the European Writers’ League, which was founded by Joseph Goebbels in 1941/42.

Next year he stayed away from the embarrassing event. Despite his distance from the Nazi regime, Carossa was one of the most promoted writers. In 1944, in the final phase of the Second World War, Carossa was included by Hitler on the Gottbegnadeten list, the list of the six most important German writers.

Hans Carossa’s first publication, the poem Stella Mystica, appeared in 1907. This work, which is faintly reminiscent of a thirteenth century “Tagelied”, contains a classic theme which continues throughout the rest of Carossa’s writings: unshakable faith in the ultimate victory of the powers of light over darkness.

Adalbert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl’s wonderous story about the man who sold his shadow to the devil in exchange for the purse of Fortunitas became world famous.

The story, intended for children, was widely read and the character became a common cultural reference in many countries. People generally remembered the element of the shadow better than how the story ended, simplifying Chamisso’s lesson to the idiom “don’t sell your shadow to the Devil.”

The Yiddish word schlemiel—borrowed from Hebrew shlumi’el—refers to a hopelessly incompetent person, a bungler. Consequently, the name is a synonym of one who makes a desperate or silly bargain. Originally the name meant friend of God, Theophilus.

In 1915 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner created a work cycle of 15 wood cut paper prints  on the base of the book. Kirchner saw parallels in the story to his own life and his feelings about inner turmoil.

Freud’s conception of the unconscious formed a part of the basis of the shadow consciousness that Carl Jung, his student and colleague, later put forward. Jung developed his theory of light and shadow psychology throughout his life.

Jungian Psychology Shadow Definitions
In Jungian psychology, shadow can refer to two different concepts. In one sense, the shadow includes everything in the unconscious mind, good or bad. In another shadow psychology definition, the shadow might include only the part of the personality that you don’t want to identify as self but still is a part of your unconscious mind. This dark side of your personality contains everything your conscious mind can’t admit about itself.
The Shadow And Archetypes
Jung was very interested in archetypes and often referred to them in his writings about shadow psychology. What are the archetypes? The word is used in art and literature to mean a symbol or motif that recurs, either in one work or across many.