Silhouette: The Art of the Shadow

Elegant and enigmatic, the silhouette is the simplest of art forms--but that simplicity belies a rich and varied past. In this first major work on the art of the silhouette, art historian Emma Rutherford draws from dozens of American and European sources to create a fascinating history of the art form--and to illuminate the surprising technical subtleties and the compelling social histories hidden in its shadows. The silhouette began as a fashionable distraction in the eighteenth-century, a creative pastime for voguish amateurs and a precursor to the daguerreotype as a means for both rich and poor to indulge contemporary passions for physiognomy. By the nineteenth century, as techniques had developed and as a pursuit had become a profession, the silhouette had established itself as a respected form of portraiture, at once recording scenes of early American life in the work of such figures as William King and influencing the aesthetic of fin de siècle European artists such as Aubrey Beardsley. Today the form has again become woven into the fabric of contemporary art and graphic design in the work of such artists as Kara Walker, Tord Boontje, and Ryan McGinness. Recording history even as its practitioners artfully captured the present, the silhouette sheds light on the genteel drawing rooms of eighteenth-century society, the sheltered existence of King George III's daughters in the English royal court, the lives of slaves and free men alike in nineteenth-century America, and the dynamics and stereotypes of contemporary culture. In this lively and lavishly illustrated work, Rutherford demonstrates how the art of the silhouette has transcended social and historical boundaries to leave an iconographic legacy of forgotten fashions, creative childhoods, and of daily lives that would otherwise be lost forever.