The Shadow

The Shadow was a popular fictional character in the United States during the 20th century. First appearing on the radio in the 1930s, he then became the central character of a comic book. In 1981, Warhol included him in a series of prints titled "Myths" alongside Superman, Santa Claus, Uncle Sam, and the Wicked Witch of the West, among others. While he dresses models in costumes to embody most of the characters, it is through his own shadow, devoid of any accessories, that he chooses to personify The Shadow. Independently of this portfolio, Warhol reuses the photographs produced for the "Myths" and derives self-portraits from them. In these, the majority of the pictorial space is occupied by the cast shadow of the artist's face, projected by a harsh light coming from the right corner of the off-screen. At the center of the composition, this shadow, a ghost of the artist stripped of its substance, becomes the protagonist. Thus, one of Warhol's last avatars is born, which he delivered in 1985 in America. "I would like my own tombstone to be blank." No epitaph, no name. Or actually, I would like it to read: "fiction."

Warhol's interest in the cast shadow as a subject of art is part of the impressive series of Shadows in which he embarked in 1978. This series constitutes one of his few abstract experiments. The shadow as the protagonist of the painting and the interplay confronting positive and negative clichés is revisited in this self-portrait from 1981. Many art critics had seen in the Shadows series an abstract self-portrait of the artist, materialised by the emphasis on marked squeegee strokes. The great pictoriality of these canvases seemed to reintegrate the trace of Warhol's hand (and that of his assistants) into his work. Whatever one may think, Warhol fully realises in The Shadow the autobiographical dimension of his series of shadows by giving the profile shadow the central place in the composition.