As followers of this blog will be aware,
I’ve recently begun experimenting with silhouette forms. Here are three more examples. Like those posted previously, they are on a small scale, although I’m working concurrently on a relatively large-scale
silhouette, a linocut for Corporeal, a
project curated by artist Rona Green. (More of this in the near future.)
In the meantime, I’m finding it fascinating
to research the origins of the silhouette. Its varied and distinguished lineage can be
directly traced to the legend of the first portrait. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (circa 77-79 AD) wrote
of Dibutade, a Corinthian girl who traced her lover’s candlelit shadow on a
wall before he set off on a long journey. Silhouettes have also been aligned
with the black-figure vases of ancient Greece and the art of Chinese
paper cutting.
Silhouettes became extremely popular in the
17th and 18th centuries. Because they were relatively
quick, simple and inexpensive to make, many amateur artists, including women, enthusiastically
took up silhouette portraiture.
By the 19th century professional
artists had patented several silhouette-tracing machines. The principal behind
them was little different to the method employed by Dibutade centuries before.
But the drawing now served as the artist’s cartoon, which was then reduced in
size using an instrument called a Pantograph or ‘Stork’s Beak’.
Even though professional silhouette artists
were patronized by the rich and famous, their clients were equally immigrants
who, in the days before the invention of photography, recognized a quick and
economical way of commissioning a likeness to send to loved-ones in their
homelands.
Recently I acquired a DVD copy of Vincente Minnelli's movie The Pirate (1948) a film I've long admired. Minnelli is an extraordinary colourist with an incredible eye for detail, for example the brief sequence where Judy Garland as Manuela sits for a silhouette portrait prior to her wedding.
Silhouettes were originally referred to as ‘l’art
d’ombre’ (shadow art) in France and ‘shades’ or ‘profiles’ in Britain. The art was
re-named for Étienne de Silhouette, a French
Economist, who, as Finance Minister during the Seven Years War (1756-63) imposed
severe economic measures on the populace – particularly the wealthy.
Consequently his name was applied derogatively to practically anything that was
done on the cheap. In this instance, the name has stuck, but fortunately its original negative connotation hasn’t.
From top:
Palmae, 2012
Cervidae, 2012
Omnivore, 2012
All acrylic on canvas, 9 x 7 cm. Photographs by Tim Gresham.
Invention of the Art of Drawing, 1793, by Joseph Benoit Suvee
Silhouette tracing machine
Drawing pantograph
Judy Garland in The Pirate, 1948. D. Vincente Minnelli