One of the key dimensions of comfort is ‘consolation’. It is through the sharing
of stories that we console each other. The art of comforting hence is the art of
storytelling.As an art historian,I am interested in how consoling narratives unfold
in visual art, or, more specifically, in what I call ‘shadow works’ in contemporary
art. This genre evolved from analogue shadow theatres with their long tradition in
China, India, Greece, and Turkey, including modern versions like Henri Rivière’s
shadow plays for the Cabaret Chat Noir or similar contemporary installations.Ever
since Lotte Reiniger’s early shadow films, the tradition can also be found in filmic
ordigitalanimations–allofwhichconjureuptheplayoflightandshadowwithina
cave (Reiniger 1970,1979).The shadow is a complex figure,which,as I will show,not
only serves as a model for metaphor but also as a source of comfort on the creative
side and on the receiving side. This can be seen especially well in the works by
the contemporary artists Hans-Peter Feldmann and William Kentridge, who locate
their most crucial images in the cave. Movable, agile images dance on the wall,
darker than the half-darkness of the cave in which they appear. In the following,
I will first discuss the manifold meanings and elusiveness of the shadow in their
œuvre. This lays the ground for explicating the comforting quality of the shadow in
the light of Hans Blumenberg’s philosophical anthropology. Blumenberg’s interest
in the human need for consolation and his theory about the birth of metaphor in
the cave will be instrumental for teasing out what makes for comfort in art.