> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Long Shadow of Artificial Darkness on Modern Culture - URL: https://hyperallergic.com/the-long-shadow-of-artificial-darkness-on-modern-culture/ - Published: 2016-11-25T17:20:13.000Z - Updated: 2025-11-24T15:57:30.000Z - Description: The emergence of artificial darkness in the 19th century, from the darkroom to the theater, radically influenced our experiences with art. - Author: Allison Meier - Tags: Books, Oskar Schlemmer, Review, Richard Wagner, University of Chicago Press, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:23 (2016, 2017, part 2) ![Artificial Darkness](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkness11.jpg) Double exposure of wire photograph from the prompt book Oskar Schlemmer assembled for Hermann Scherchen (1926) (courtesy Atelier Grill, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin) While the[ installation of gas and electric light ](https://hyperallergic.com/how-artists-interpreted-the-transformation-of-paris-into-a-city-of-light/)in 19th-century cities certainly influenced society and culture, a new book argues that the artificial darkness which emerged in the same era had its own impact. [*Artificial Darkness: An Obscure History of Modern Art and Media*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/022632897X/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com)by Noam M. Elcott was released earlier this year by the [University of Chicago Press](http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo22879419.html?ref=hyperallergic.com). ![Cover of 'Artificial Darkness: An Obscure History of Modern Art and Media' by Noam M. Elcott (courtesy University of Chicago Press)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkcover.jpg) Cover of ‘Artificial Darkness: An Obscure History of Modern Art and Media’ by Noam M. Elcott (courtesy University of Chicago Press) “Darkness has a history and a uniquely modern form,” writes Elcott, an associate professor of art history at Columbia University. “Ancients and early moderns alike knew darkness as chaos and absence, night and shadow, evil gods and melancholic thoughts, the color or noncolor black. They knew darkness principally as negation. Moderns mobilized artificial light to conquer the dark, disenchant the night, and create new media and art.” Elcott’s *Artificial Darkness* navigates this human-made gloam through a series of sites and individuals, such as [Étienne-Jules Marey](http://hyperallergic.com/197464/the-scientist-who-shot-his-photos-with-a-gun-and-inspired-futurism/) at his 19th-century Physiological Station in France. There Marey [photographed movement](http://hyperallergic.com/197464/the-scientist-who-shot-his-photos-with-a-gun-and-inspired-futurism/) against a black screen, with participants dressed partly in black, to emphasize certain motions while masking other parts of the body. Elcott also emphasizes how darkness in the theater, whether for cinema or drama, is a relatively recent norm. At the turn of the century, a dark theater might have been referred to as “Wagnerian,” referencing German composer Richard Wagner’s Festival Theater, which had a successful 1876 debut. Before that, a theater was “a space to see and be seen, two aims that were often in conflict.” ![Artificial Darkness](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkness02.jpg) Wagner’s Festival Theater at Bayreuth, photograph of the original ‘Parsifal’ production (1882) (courtesy University of Chicago Press) Elcott notes that “artificial darkness was, above all, a technology of visibility and invisibility.” Of course, this new immersion of the audience into a tantalizing night quickly sparked fears about scandalous behavior, with reactionary actions such as the British National Council of Public Morals’s issuing the 1917 report “The Moral Danger of Darkness.” Nevertheless, the dark emphasis on the stage endured, and Elcott highlights later artists like Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus performers that involved the obscurity of dark space in avant-garde theater. ![Artificial Darkness](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkness05.jpg) “Black Art revealed,” from Albert A. Hopkins’s ‘Magic’ (1897) (courtesy University of Chicago Press) “Modern artificial darkness negated the negative qualities ascribed to its timeless counterpart: divorced from nature and metaphor, highly controlled and circumscribed, it was a technology that fused humans and images,” Elcott writes. “More precisely, controlled artificial darkness negated space, disciplined bodies, and suspended corporeality in favor of the production and reception of images.” *Artificial Darkness* is definitely an academic book, although its thorough text is beautifully illustrated with the ghosts conjured with magic lanterns in Étienne-Gaspard Robert’s 19th-century phantasmagoria, “Black Art” shows from the 1890s when skeletons hovered in inky space, held aloft by hidden performers, and Georges Méliès’s early 20th-century films that conjured fantastic illusions through dark screens, such as making heads of actors disappear. From the photography darkroom to the disorientation of time in theatrical spaces, the 19th and 20th centuries radically changed our perception of darkness, from a state of night and shadows, to an artificial setting for spectral spectacles. ![Artificial Darkness](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkness10.jpg) Disc photograph from the prompt book Schlemmer assembled for Hermann Scherchen (1926) (courtesy Atelier Grill, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin) ![Pages from 'Artificial Darkness: An Obscure History of Modern Art and Media' (photo of the book for Hyperallergic)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkbook01.jpg) Pages from ‘Artificial Darkness: An Obscure History of Modern Art and Media’ (photo of the book for Hyperallergic) ![Pages from 'Artificial Darkness: An Obscure History of Modern Art and Media' (photo of the book for Hyperallergic)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkbook03.jpg) Pages from ‘Artificial Darkness: An Obscure History of Modern Art and Media’ (photo of the book for Hyperallergic) ![Artificial Darkness](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkness21.jpg) Étienne-Jules Marey, “Successive partial images of a marching man” (1883), chronophotograph (courtesy Fonds Marey, Collège de France) ![Artificial Darkness](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkness03.jpg) Phantasmagoric back projection, as seen in the frontispiece to volume 2 of ‘M. Breton, Les savants de quinze ans, ou, Entretiens d’une jeune famille’ (1811) (courtesyBeinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library) ![Artificial Darkness](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkness04.jpg) “The Stage Setting for Black Art,” from Albert A. Hopkins’s ‘Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography’ (1897) (courtesy University of Chicago Press) ![Artificial Darkness](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkness06.jpg) Davies & Co., albumen carte-de-visite of Dr. Lynn, aka Washington Simmons (1860) (courtesy State Library of Victoria, Australia) ![Artificial Darkness](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkness07.jpg) Segundo de Chomón, ‘Le voleur invisible’ (Pathé, 1909), digital frame grabs (courtesy University of Chicago Press) ![Artificial Darkness](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkness08.jpg) Georges Méliès, “Un homme de tête (The Four Troublesome Heads)” (Star Film, 1898), frame enlargement (courtesy Lobster Films) ![Artificial Darkness](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/11/artificialdarkness09.jpg) Spiral photograph from the prompt book Schlemmer assembled for Hermann Scherchen (1926) (courtesy Atelier Grill, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin) [Artificial Darkness: An Obscure History of Modern Art and Media ](https://www.amazon.com/dp/022632897X/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com)*by Noam M. Elcott is out now from the* [*University of Chicago Press*](http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo22879419.html?ref=hyperallergic.com)*.*