Paulo Barbaresi / Forms of Penumbra

Forms of Penumbra

The Codependent Existence of Light and Darkness

Paulo Barbaresi

In review­ing the vast bib­li­og­ra­phy con­cern­ing the top­ic of light and shad­ow one notices how dif­fer­ing lay­ers of knowl­edge have built up one atop anoth­er. Thus, one may also take for grant­ed that light is omnipresent, and that dark­ness is almost inex­is­tent, where shad­ows are col­lat­er­al­ly local man­i­fes­ta­tions expe­ri­enced as a rel­a­tive defi­cien­cy of light itself.

Through­out his­to­ry west­ern cul­tures have used light as a medi­um to con­vey clar­i­ty and to empha­size impor­tance. Light has been asso­ci­at­ed with the val­ue of life, the after-death and philo­soph­i­cal con­structs regard­ing truth. Dark­ness has been asso­ci­at­ed with the occult, the hid­den, to neg­a­tiv­i­ty and sur­rep­ti­tious­ness. Con­verse­ly, most east­ern cul­tures have shown a pre­dis­po­si­tion for shad­ows, where shad­ows are linked to the soul and inher­ent aspects of one’s per­son­al­i­ty. Regard­ing space, the nuance shad­ows have defined plat­forms for spa­tial com­pre­hen­sion. In their spa­tial con­cep­tion mean­ing is pro­duced not through abrupt changes but through sub­tle vari­a­tions,”1 sug­gest­ing pat­terns of shad­ows as a vehi­cle for manip­u­lat­ing space. Besides the cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences one can agree that the nuances of shad­ows imply dif­fer­ing nuances of light. 

Schol­ars have recent­ly prof­fered the notion that the mys­tery of light in space does not grav­i­tate towards its presence—as an inde­pen­dent iso­lat­ed matter—but rather towards its absence. Based on this the­sis, one can momen­tar­i­ly detach the cul­tur­al impli­ca­tions of shad­ows and observe that the absence of light—as a modal procedure—has been con­sis­tent­ly present with­in the realm of artis­tic and spa­tial poet­ics of west­ern culture.

Leonar­do Da Vin­ci attempt­ed to under­stand the phe­nom­e­na of light linked to the stud­ies and the­o­ries of per­spec­tive evolv­ing dur­ing the renais­sance through obser­va­tion­al draw­ings. He cat­e­go­rized three types of light defi­cien­cies: cast shad­ows, attached shad­ows and shad­ing2. Despite dis­crep­an­cies in how these terms are con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly under­stood, the nature of Leonardo’s obser­va­tion­al sketch­es con­dense the phe­nom­e­nal com­plex­i­ties of light through graph­ic codes: light rep­re­sent­ed through pro­jec­tions and shad­ow as surfaces.

“The Fall of Light on a Face”, 1480, Leonardo Da Vinci. The study of the effect of light rays on a face is a part of Leonardo’s scientific interest in painting and natural phenomena. The study concludes with a series of classifications of shadows according to how they fall and how they are produced. Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019
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“The Fall of Light on a Face”, 1480, Leonardo Da Vinci. The study of the effect of light rays on a face is a part of Leonardo’s scientific interest in painting and natural phenomena. The study concludes with a series of classifications of shadows according to how they fall and how they are produced. Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019

The falling of Light on a face (1480) maps an event [ 1 ] using syn­tac­ti­cal tra­jec­to­ries of light to inform the rela­tion­ship among the source (point a), the medi­um (face) and the receiv­er (skin). This ana­lyt­i­cal demon­stra­tion detach­es the spa­tial char­ac­ter­is­tics of light and dark­ness by reduc­ing the phe­nom­e­na to sim­ple representational/observational facts.

This reduc­tion of con­tent inher­ent in the analy­sis of com­plex events reshapes our men­tal con­structs about these phe­nom­e­na, pre­vent­ing the aware­ness of oth­er fun­da­men­tal aspects of light and dark­ness: those crit­i­cal ele­ments relat­ed to space. This fact dri­ves observers to asso­ciate light with what is vis­i­ble” and shad­ows with a col­lat­er­al pro­ject­ed sur­face. A more expe­ri­enced observ­er might seman­ti­cal­ly asso­ciate light with a pres­ence – with addi­tion, and shad­ows with absence – with subtraction.

If a rep­re­sen­ta­tion implies—by default—a reduc­tion of con­tent, is there a pos­si­bil­i­ty that we are los­ing inher­ent aspects of the phe­nom­e­na that may reshape our con­cep­tion of light and dark­ness? Can shadow—as a degree of darkness—be asso­ci­at­ed with a pres­ence and light with absence? Is the ana­lyt­i­cal pro­ce­dure con­vey­ing the idea that light and shad­ow are two sep­a­rate con­di­tions pre­vent­ing the observ­er from see­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing them as one?

The per­cep­tu­al under­stand­ing of the phe­nom­e­na requires the inclu­sive analy­sis of both ana­lyt­i­cal and artis­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Leonar­do Da Vin­ci him­self wrote in his notes: Dark­ness is the absence of light. Shad­ow is the diminu­tion of light.” 3 He fur­ther asserts: The begin­nings and ends of shad­ow lie between the light and dark­ness and may be infi­nite­ly dimin­ished and infi­nite­ly increased. Shad­ow is the means by which bod­ies dis­play their form. The forms of bod­ies could not be under­stood in detail but for shad­ow.” 4


“The Calling of Saint Matthew”, 1601, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The juxtaposition of two forces is solved with the technique of chiaroscuro, using shadows to convey meaning. © Scala / Art Resource. Public domain. Image displayed under Fair Use policy.
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“The Calling of Saint Matthew”, 1601, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The juxtaposition of two forces is solved with the technique of chiaroscuro, using shadows to convey meaning. © Scala / Art Resource. Public domain. Image displayed under Fair Use policy.

Da Vinci’s notes sug­gest that a shad­ow is an inter­sti­tial con­di­tion between bodies…between light and dark­ness: Shad­ow is the diminu­tion alike of light and of dark­ness, and stands between dark­ness and light” 5. It is impor­tant to under­stand that the term shad­ow was used dif­fer­ent­ly by Leonar­do, often as the coun­ter­part of the lumi­nous rays, which are cut off by an opaque body” 6, in oth­er words as an absence, and as a degree of dark­ness, which he called sim­ple shad­ow or com­pound shad­ow. To avoid mis­un­der­stand­ing, this inter­sti­tial con­di­tion can be iden­ti­fied with the term penum­bra. Penum­bra (from Latin paene, almost” and umbra, shad­ow”) is under­stood and revealed to us as the space of shad­ow between light and total dark­ness. It is an area where it is dif­fi­cult to define the end­ing of one pres­ence and the begin­ning of anoth­er. Penum­bra is used here broad­ly and is not lim­it­ed to the physical—fading light/darkness—but includes phys­i­o­log­i­cal and per­cep­tu­al fea­tures that its pres­ence gen­er­ates in space. It frames the feel­ing of ambi­gu­i­ty inher­ent in the lim­i­nal” con­di­tion, between two appar­ent, con­sol­i­dat­ed stages.

Da Vin­ci explored the inter­sti­tial nature of penum­bra in Madon­na Lit­ta (1490−91) and The Last Sup­per (1498), among oth­er works. Tiziano Vecel­lio, in his paint­ing The Agony in the Gar­den (1558 – 62), fur­thered the idea which in turn influ­enced his pupil Michelan­ge­lo Merisi da Car­avag­gio. The Call­ing of Saint Matthew (1601) is well-known for explor­ing the coali­tion of the two forces: the pow­er of faith rep­re­sent­ed by Jesus’s illu­mi­nat­ed face—bringing the omnipresent light with him—and the mun­dane world of tax col­lec­tors [ 2 ]. The paint­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al­ly illus­trates oppo­si­tions and inver­sions. The use of chiaroscuro on the right side is extreme, and illus­trates the bod­ies of light and darkness—almost touching—with a clear hor­i­zon­tal dis­sec­tion: the good from the bad, clar­i­ty from dark­ness. Jesus is posi­tioned with­in the darkness.

The lim­i­nal con­di­tion between bodies—light and darkness—is expand­ed towards the left side of the paint­ing. A wider body of penum­bra cor­re­sponds to a wider range of per­son­al­i­ties with­in the mun­dane world and the dif­fuse bound­ary between poten­tial and help­less­ness. Penum­bra embraces the tax col­lec­tors but also Matthew, defin­ing a body where trans­for­ma­tions hap­pen: the call, the moment of con­ver­sion from one con­di­tion to anoth­er. Thus, the com­po­si­tion inverts the idea of shad­ows as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of absence and presents it as a fun­da­men­tal, spir­i­tu­al pres­ence. Penum­bra becomes a body capa­ble of gen­er­at­ing space and con­tain­ing crit­i­cal events via dif­fer­ent illu­mi­na­tions. Light is asso­ci­at­ed with absence, or, with and exter­nal pres­ence dom­i­nat­ing the scene.

Caravaggio’s penum­bra con­tributed to mak­ing this bib­li­cal event a con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly imme­di­ate, even pedes­tri­an, event: the result of a modal­i­ty that con­veys mean­ing and expos­es con­tent by solid­i­fy­ing” the rela­tion between light and dark­ness. As time­less as they are in them­selves, they also make the rela­tion between space and ten­sion time­less, regard­less of the speci­fici­ty of con­tent. Cer­tain forms of penum­bra are—in themselves—a vehicle. 

Caravaggio’s alchemisti­cal approach using dos­es of penum­bra and dra­mat­ic chiaroscuro have become fun­da­men­tal for gen­er­at­ing ten­sion and con­vey­ing mean­ing. His work gave birth to the tene­brism for the pro­nounced use of light and dark­ness, espe­cial­ly when dark­ness projects pri­mor­dial char­ac­ter­is­tics.7 The pro­found poten­tial of the tech­nique inspired coeta­neous painters—the Car­avaggisti—to work inside a field with gen­er­ous dark­ness, a field induced by ten­sion; they suc­cess­ful­ly con­veyed mean­ing by reg­u­lat­ing inter­sti­tial accents and den­si­ties of penumbra. 

In review­ing their work, one can­not dis­miss that the dark com­po­si­tion­al aura touch­es upon the tran­scen­den­tal edge of the sub­lime. There is a spa­tial rich­ness inbuilt” through the accent­ed use of chiaroscuro, a force that express­es the capac­i­ty of emer­gence. Is there a poten­tial form of space locked” with­in this ten­sion? Does this ten­sion tem­porar­i­ly remain in time or does it vary with it? To which point is the medium—the form, which con­structs accent­ed penumbra—responsible for hold­ing this ten­sion? Is it pos­si­ble that a con­ceived form con­structs such a ten­sion that it tran­scends time? 

Hold­ing this con­di­tion in time has been the inter­est of many artists, in some cas­es tak­ing the top­ic to lev­els that exceeds exis­tence and posits a real­i­ty out­side human per­cep­tion. Gior­gio Di Chiri­co con­front­ed this uncer­tain­ty with a set of pic­tures known as piazze metafisiche, meta­phys­i­cal explo­rations that began after a per­son­al expe­ri­ence in Piaz­za San­ta Croce, Flo­rence Italy. The piazze are pre­ludes to a deep­er study of par­al­lel expe­ri­ences: Every­thing has two aspects: the cur­rent aspect, which we see near­ly always and which ordi­nary men see, and the ghost­ly and meta­phys­i­cal aspect, which only rare indi­vid­u­als may see in moments of clair­voy­ance and meta­phys­i­cal abstrac­tion.” 8

“Mystery and Melancholy of a Street”, 1914, Giorgio de Chirico. Penumbra is used in combination with optical tools to construct narrative content by observation. © Private collection. Image displayed under Fair Use policy
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“Mystery and Melancholy of a Street”, 1914, Giorgio de Chirico. Penumbra is used in combination with optical tools to construct narrative content by observation. © Private collection. Image displayed under Fair Use policy

Mys­tery and Melan­choly of a Street (1914) sur­re­al­is­ti­cal­ly maps an event. Penum­bra is all there: it is a suggestion—the mes­sage to convey—it is a fad­ing res­o­nance embod­ied with latent con­tent. The penum­bra evokes the will to reveal what has not been revealed yet—the antic­i­pa­to­ry thresh­old of the unknown [ 3 ].

An eclipse-like orange light slices the can­vas with an inci­sive trace, a demar­ca­tion of the dual­i­ty required to define form. The meta­phys­i­cal event allows free pro­jec­tions, dis­tort­ed van­ish­ing points and sug­gests a jux­ta­po­si­tion of spaces as the mea­sure for the com­po­si­tion. Degrees of dark­ness con­tribute to a modal­i­ty that seems to dis­so­ci­ate space from time, the pref­ace for a time-lapse experience.

The dark base of the pic­ture, as in The Call­ing of Saint Matthew, and the skies in accent­ed dark­ness are fram­ing the observ­er to stand in a point in which light is fad­ed. Dark­ness, as point of view, is the coun­ter­point of the inci­sive light at the cen­ter of the pic­ture. It empha­sizes the enig­ma of the cen­tral shad­ow and the girl’s sil­hou­ette. Chiaroscuro is used in per­spec­tive, through the depth of the pic­ture, fol­low­ing a trace from the observ­er to the van­ish points. These resources are fram­ing a space dis­lo­cat­ed from the point of action. The girl’s black sil­hou­ette forces us to focus on what her shad­ow is say­ing: to run to the shad­ows of a pos­si­ble stat­ue. The mes­sage is clear: the shad­ows come first—the will, the action; after comes the pos­si­ble result—arriving to the statue. 

There is a nar­ra­tive path, a line we fol­low which rais­es ten­sion. The unfold­ed enig­ma allows the observ­er to fill in the gaps of the unknown, becom­ing per­cep­tu­al­ly involved and even­tu­al­ly cre­at­ing his/her nar­ra­tive with poten­tial spaces. The right-hand build­ing in the penum­bra offers the ques­tion of what may be inside the build­ing itself, at the arcade and espe­cial­ly what is behind it: a square where action hap­pens. As with Car­avag­gio, light is void.

The non-align­ment of van­ish­ing points con­tribute to the over­lap­ping of spaces fram­ing the time-lapse. The left-side pro­jec­tions and van­ish­ing points define the arma­ture for con­fig­ur­ing a hid­den space”, a place where the action may hap­pen. The right-side pro­jec­tions and van­ish­ing points lead to the nar­ra­tive action itself, a point where two shadows/silhouettes will meet. The non-align­ment of forces chal­lenges the idea of space and action as jux­ta­posed, syn­chro­nized enti­ties and pro­pos­es that they are not oppo­si­tion­al with­in one’s perceptual—observational—field.

The inci­sive line divid­ing both bod­ies acts as a scalpel, a tool used to slice form and space. As the archi­tect Alber­to Cam­po Baeza has sug­gest­ed, line is used as a medi­um for under­stand­ing space by dis­sect­ing what is dark­ness and what is light9, what is form and what is space. The ten­sion held between both is the field of maneu­ver for De Chiri­co to con­vey a mes­sage, a mode with poten­tial­i­ty for archi­tects to influ­ence architecture.

Fur­ther­more, com­plex uses of shad­ows can be observed in cer­tain works of cubism, the first artis­tic van­guard to chal­lenge the strict idea of per­spec­tive as a form of nar­ra­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion – a restruc­tur­ing of for­mal rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al tools and sys­tems used to express all parts of an object—or scene—in the same pic­ture plane, thus achiev­ing a holis­tic vision” of space. A divorce from a per­spec­tive is a divorce from a unique point of view. Mul­ti­ple faces of an event are syn­the­sized and col­lat­ed into one piece as one expression.

“El Guernica”, 1937, Pablo Picasso. Shadows emphasizing the act of stillness versus light expressing movement. © Sucesión Pablo Picasso. VEGAP, Madrid, 2019. Image displayed under Fair Use policy.
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“El Guernica”, 1937, Pablo Picasso. Shadows emphasizing the act of stillness versus light expressing movement. © Sucesión Pablo Picasso. VEGAP, Madrid, 2019. Image displayed under Fair Use policy.

The act of frag­ment­ing form and space is not inno­cent. It dis­tances itself from assumed fac­tu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions. Pic­to­r­i­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions focus on per­cep­tu­al expe­ri­ence, expand­ing the time-lapse of events through mul­ti­far­i­ous points of view. In El Guer­ni­ca (1937), Pablo Picas­so explores the hor­rif­ic dra­ma of the bomb­ing of Guer­ni­ca. The whole scene is nar­rat­ed by con­nect­ing indi­vid­ual events, which are seman­ti­cal­ly three-dimen­sion­al, bi-dimen­sion­al­ly stripped and exposed. A col­lec­tion of ele­ments is revealed one to anoth­er, express­ing how they are relat­ed to each oth­er inside the dra­ma. Map­ping these rela­tions becomes a pri­or­i­ty defin­ing a palimpses­tic read­ing, decom­pos­ing and frag­ment­ing form and con­dens­ing infor­ma­tion as need­ed to unfold the may­hem. Penum­bra is fun­da­men­tal. The body of shad­ows becomes inde­pen­dent. It becomes a sep­a­rate iden­ti­ty capa­ble of being detached” from the form and per­forms a deep­er role: to hold/connect the events that are vig­or­ous­ly, and anar­chi­cal­ly, frag­ment­ed [ 4 ].

The body of shad­ows works as an arma­ture in the com­po­si­tion, giv­ing sta­bil­i­ty to frag­ments and pieces. The bull and horse posi­tioned in dark shad­ow seem to rep­re­sent the act of stay­ing, a pre­lude for the dra­ma. The nuances of the penum­bra sup­port sta­t­ic events: the ones hap­pen­ing an instant before the bombing—the living—and after it…the dead. The con­tours of the pro­ject­ed shad­ows escape the ratio­nal log­ic of light pro­jec­tions. They tend to con­nect to one anoth­er giv­ing a sense of mea­sure­ment between the ele­ments in the pic­ture. Light can be asso­ci­at­ed with suf­fer­ing, scream­ing, run­ning and escap­ing. Light is the move­ment that tends to escape from the arma­ture of penumbra.

Photogram “Self-Portrait of the Inventor of the Photogram”, 1926, László Moholy-Nagy. One-off picture as the end result of condensing light passing through several media. © The Moholy-Nagy Foundation
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Photogram “Self-Portrait of the Inventor of the Photogram”, 1926, László Moholy-Nagy. One-off picture as the end result of condensing light passing through several media. © The Moholy-Nagy Foundation

From left to right: “Scenography of Hoffmann’s Erzählungen”, 1929 and “Light Space Modulator” (© VG Bild-Kunst / © Lucia Moholy), 1930, László Moholy-Nagy. These images show Moholy-Nagy’s intention to generate tools for projecting forms to create new manifestations of space. © The Moholy-Nagy Foundation
From left to right: “Scenography of Hoffmann’s Erzählungen”, 1929 and “Light Space Modulator” (© VG Bild-Kunst / © Lucia Moholy), 1930, László Moholy-Nagy. These images show Moholy-Nagy’s intention to generate tools for projecting forms to create new manifestations of space. © The Moholy-Nagy Foundation
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From left to right: “Scenography of Hoffmann’s Erzählungen”, 1929 and “Light Space Modulator” (© VG Bild-Kunst / © Lucia Moholy), 1930, László Moholy-Nagy. These images show Moholy-Nagy’s intention to generate tools for projecting forms to create new manifestations of space. © The Moholy-Nagy Foundation

There is anoth­er form of penum­bra that is not ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed because it is not used as a medi­um for relat­ing objects in the scene, but is rather a mat­ter con­tained in the process of mak­ing. In 1922 Lás­zló Moholy-Nagy began to map ideas of trans­paren­cy using a source, a medi­um and a receiv­er. He pro­duced sil­hou­ettes in a neg­a­tive form by expos­ing objects on light-sen­si­tive paper in a pho­to­graph­ic process with­out the use of a cam­era. He called these one-off pic­tures pho­tograms’. Pho­togram Self-Por­trait of the Inven­tor of the Pho­togram (1926), as he called it, fea­tures a kind of penum­bra that can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from the pho­togram itself. The image con­dens­es the depth of mat­ter pro­duced by light pass­ing through the objects and spaces between them. The whole jour­ney of light is com­pressed in the receiv­er (the medi­um), in this case, pho­to­graph­ic paper, around Moholy-Nagy’s face [ 5 ].

Moholy-Nagy was one of the pio­neers in the use of Light as a decision–making ele­ment. Through an exper­i­men­tal machine known as Light Space Mod­u­la­tor (1930), ideas about trans­paren­cies emerged as form of pro­ject­ed pat­terns of penum­bra. The machine for creat[ing] pools of light and shad­ow” 10 would exem­pli­fy his prin­ci­ple of vision in motion” 11 based on under­stand­ing and extract­ing aes­thet­ic forms from a liv­ing body to cre­ate new expres­sions of space [ 6 ].

Many instances in his career make his fas­ci­na­tion with map­ping trans­paren­cy evi­dent. The series of Gelatin sil­ver pho­tograms and Gelatin sil­ver prints from 1939 to 1943, includ­ing expe­ri­ences using col­or (1939), are pat­terns of penum­bra as aes­thet­ic forms. Moholy-Nagy saw space in these pat­terns, espe­cial­ly in the beau­ty of the move­ment as a pre­lude for spa­tial form. Pro­ject­ed reg­is­tra­tions of penum­bra were com­pressed in a sur­face medium—a photogram—resulting in a chore­og­ra­phy of spa­tial asso­ci­a­tions. One can assume that Moholy-Nagy was not look­ing for trans­paren­cy, but for forms of translu­cence: qua­si-trans­par­ent forms that allow mate­ri­al­ly reg­u­lat­ed trans­mis­sions of light, estab­lish­ing an aes­thet­ic dia­logue”. The result did not seek to evoke a real­i­ty but rather an explo­ration of the act of map­ping itself. The rela­tion between the ele­ments along a tra­jec­to­ry of light became pri­mor­dial. The source, the medi­ums and the receiv­er were every­thing need­ed for con­fig­ur­ing the spa­tial man­i­fes­ta­tions to arti­facts and arti­facts to space. 

The action of com­pact­ing space into a pla­nar form reveals that penum­bra can be con­tained” in cer­tain rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al medi­ums. In 2014 Steven Holl vis­it­ed Caja of Grana­da, con­sid­ered one of the best works of Cam­po Baeza. Accord­ing to Holl the vis­it was a cel­e­bra­tion of the exis­tence of archi­tec­ture regard­less of its func­tion”. He expressed the mag­nif­i­cence of this space as an implu­vi­um of light”, a ves­sel for light and a medi­um that stip­u­lates the sea­son­ing of the build­ing. The spa­tial rich­ness” of this work would not be pos­si­ble with­out the use of a key trans­mu­ta­tion­al medi­um: thin pieces of alabaster. 

Caja de Granada, 2001, Alberto Campo Baeza. Screenshot from Steven Holl at Caja de Granada (video). Alabaster skin utilizing external light to reveal internal forms of penumbra, its structure and its essence. © Alberto Campo Baeza. Courtesy of Estudio Arquitectura Campo Baeza
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Caja de Granada, 2001, Alberto Campo Baeza. Screenshot from Steven Holl at Caja de Granada (video). Alabaster skin utilizing external light to reveal internal forms of penumbra, its structure and its essence. © Alberto Campo Baeza. Courtesy of Estudio Arquitectura Campo Baeza

The inner shell is con­struct­ed using plates of alabaster, a mate­r­i­al that does not reject/reflect light but rather absorbs it. One can say the penum­bra gov­erns the inte­ri­or of this stone: it only needs light to reveal what is hid­den with­in. Alabaster, as a medi­um, allows light to escape or reen­ter the void. The same rela­tion­ship is present here: the source, the medi­um and the receiv­er. Penum­bra can be asso­ci­at­ed with den­si­ty; mat­ter con­dens­es forms of penum­bra [ 7 ].

Forms of penum­bra are present in acts of rep­re­sen­ta­tion and mak­ing. It is a medi­um in both. Penum­bra con­tained in rep­re­sen­ta­tions is con­nect­ed more to the idea of con­vey­ing mean­ing, while penum­bra as a result of mak­ing is relat­ed more to the idea of mass and form. Both can be seen as sep­a­rate or joint expe­ri­ences; as a con­tin­u­um and a con­se­quen­tial process, from a bi-dimen­sion­al to three-dimen­sion­al man­i­fes­ta­tion, and vice ver­sa. The first implies a process of cre­at­ing space, adding con­tent to a pla­nar man­i­fes­ta­tion in order to spa­tial­ize it. The sec­ond involves a process of con­dens­ing, reduc­ing and extract­ing con­tent to even­tu­al­ly fin­ish with a dis­tilled armature.

The forms of penum­bra con­sid­ered above are deployed as vehi­cles oper­at­ing with­in the design process. Specif­i­cal­ly, Caravaggio’s work fea­tures a penum­bra that is often bi-dimen­sion­al: a jux­ta­posed pla­nar field, extreme­ly dark, that achieves three-dimen­sion­al­i­ty by being inter­rupt­ed abrupt­ly where crit­i­cal con­tent needs to be anchored, by becom­ing dif­fused where mean­ing needs to be con­struct­ed, by inten­si­fy­ing col­or-con­trast where nar­ra­tive links need to be height­ened and by allow­ing trans­paren­cy where meta­phys­i­cal pres­ences need to be evoked. The accu­ra­cy in the details and the man­ner in which penum­bra col­ors the event make the instant of the call­ing” a point in time palimpses­ti­cal­ly embed­ded with meaning.

De Chirico’s penum­bra fun­da­men­tal­ly embod­ies space, which is inher­ent­ly latent in his meta­phys­i­cal motives. Although there is a bi-dimen­sion­al medi­um, the spa­tial nar­ra­tive is com­plet­ed by the observ­er when fill­ing in the gaps the art­work ambigu­ous­ly con­veys. The work has the poten­tial to per­cep­tu­al­ly trig­ger a three-dimen­sion­al world.

Picas­so struc­tured Guer­ni­ca with pat­terns of shad­ows and con­nect­ed them with aspects of time”. Shad­ows asso­cia­tive­ly con­nect scenes as inten­tion­al arma­tures con­vey­ing con­tent before and after the bom­bard­ing. Light is the action and the move­ment, which is framed between these two moments in time. Spa­tial­i­ty is also chal­lenged seman­ti­cal­ly when mul­ti­ple points of view rein­force the message.

Maholy-Nagy reshapes penum­bra as technique—and tool—and sit­u­ates it as an inher­ent, and trans­mutable, spa­tial con­di­tion. Through his pho­tograms and ideas of trans­fer­ring movement—or three-dimen­sion­al manifestations—to bi-dimen­sion­al medi­ums and vice ver­sa he achieves the idea of syn­thet­i­cal­ly con­dens­ing space ver­sus expand­ing and cre­at­ing space—adding con­tent. Obser­va­tions about Cam­po Baeza’s build­ing rein­forces tan­gen­tial ideas in Moholy-Nagy work, which implies that penum­bra is not only an exter­nal man­i­fes­ta­tion of form but it is also an inher­ent inter­sti­tial man­i­fes­ta­tion of mat­ter. Light is need­ed to reveal the hid­den penum­bra with­in the mass itself. 

These ideas rein­force the poten­tial­ly embed­ded in the use of penum­bra with­in the design process. Leonar­do Da Vin­ci has an intuition: 

“Light [on an object] is of the nature of a luminous body; one conceals and the other reveals. They are always associated and inseparable from all objects. But shadow is a more powerful agent than light, for it can impede and entirely deprive bodies of their light, while light can never entirely expel shadow from a body, that is from an opaque body.” 12

Penum­bra has a strong rela­tion to accu­ra­cy, latent con­tent, arma­ture, expand­ed and con­densed space and mat­ter. There­fore, it has the poten­tial to enrich design process­es when it is under­stood as a medi­um, not just as an arma­ture for con­ceiv­ing design, but rather an ele­ment of tran­si­tion to new cre­ations, enhanc­ing con­ti­nu­ity in the design process.

  1. 1

    Tom Heneghan quot­ing Koji Taki in Ando, Tadao; Pare, Richard; Heneghan, Tom (1996). Tadao Ando archi­tec­ture: the colours of light. Lon­don: Phaidon, 2000, p. 19.

  2. 2

    Baxan­dall, Michael (1997). Shad­ows and Enlight­en­ment. Lon­don: Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press, p. 3–4

  3. 3

    McCur­dy, Edward (1871). The note­books of Leonar­do da Vin­ci. Old Say­brook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, p. 124.

  4. 4

    Ibid., p 122.

  5. 5

    Ibid., p 122.

  6. 6

    Ibid., p 121.

  7. 7

    Pri­mor­dial is undestood as an aspect con­sti­tu­ing at the begin­ning, with the poten­tial of giv­ing orig­inh to some­thing derived from it.

  8. 8

    Gold­wa­ter R., Treves M. (1980) Artists on Art: From 14th to 20th Cen­tu­ry. Lon­don: John Mur­ray, 1990, p. 440

  9. 9

    Cam­po Baeza, Alber­to et al (2018). El bis­turí en la línea: razón, pre­cisión y mesura en el dibu­jo y el pen­samien­to arqui­tec­tóni­cos de Alber­to Cam­po Baeza. Ali­cante: Uni­ver­si­dad de Alicante

  10. 10

    Raw­sthorn, Alice (2009). A Life of Light and Shad­ow. The New York Times. [Online] Avail­able from: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/1…

  11. 11

    Moholy-Nagy Lás­zló, Theobald Paul (1947). Vision in Motion. Chica­go, p. 12

  12. 12

    McCur­dy, Edward (1871). The note­books of Leonar­do da Vin­ci. Old Say­brook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, p. 119.

Bibliography

Ando, Tadao; Pare, Richard; Heneghan, Tom (1996). Tadao Ando archi­tec­ture : the colours of light. Lon­don : Phaidon.

Baxan­dall, Michael (1997). Shad­ows and Enlight­en­ment. Lon­don: Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press.

Mac­Cur­dy, Edward (1871). The note­books of Leonar­do da Vin­ci. Konecky & Konecky.

Gold­wa­ter R., Treves M. (1980) Artists on Art: From 14th to 20th Cen­tu­ry. Lon­don: John Murray.

Cam­po Baeza, Alber­to et al (2018). El bis­turí en la línea: razón, pre­cisión y mesura en el dibu­jo y el pen­samien­to arqui­tec­tóni­cos de Alber­to Cam­po Baeza. Ali­cante: Uni­ver­si­dad de Alicante.

Moholy-Nagy Lás­zló, Theobald Paul (1947). Vision in Motion. Chica­go: Paul Theobald.

Raw­sthorn, Alice (2009). A Life of Light and Shad­ow. The New York Times. [Online] Avail­able from: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/1…