I learned a new word today – Chiaroscuro. It is a art technique, often used to emphasize and illuminate important figures in a painting or drawing. This technique uses colors and shades, to contrast between light and dark. The concept was picked up from renascence era paintings, and is commonly used in photography, and cinema where it is better known as split lighting.
Concept of duality
The word chiaroscuro itself has an Italian origin, chiaro is bright, and oscuro is dark. It also depicts how our minds work – sometimes bright, clear and happy and at other times dark, hazy or sad. This duality is also reflected in Chinese philosophy of Yin-Yang. This philosophy reinforces concept of opposite forces, that support each other. Conflicts of thought or mind are also depicted in a “chiaroscuro way” in some art-inspired postage stamps.
Half shaded face is a symbol of mood of mystery, inner conflict, and drama. It implies a duality in personality. In a symbolic sense, it can represent the conscious and unconscious mind. While all individuals have variations in their personality, it comes out to be most pronounced in bipolar mood disorders. Individuals with bipolar disorder have intense shifts in mood, energy levels and behavior, ranging from mania to depression.
Expression of stress
The deep shadow on face can suggest that the person is lost in thought or has a complex inner world. Such depiction also implies that only a portion of their identity is presented. Such shadows can evoke a stressed or serious, pensive look.
Redemption and resolve
A portrait with half the face in warm light and half in shadow can also symbolize a moment of transition. Such chiaroscuro images also suggest a change, such as getting uplifted.
Duality of addiction
Addiction is a state of moral complexity. Addictive substances hijack the brain’s reward system, primarily the dopamine pathway, leading to intense cravings and urges. Cravings lead to compulsive intake, beyond one’s capability to resist. This leads to moral complexity of indulgence despite known harms. The shadowed or dark side is often used to portray this complexity.
This technique of half-shaded face generates a sense of intrigue and suspense. It leads to questions about hidden secrets or an untold story. When paired with a somber expression, the shadows can represent hidden struggles with depression or trauma.
A contrast can also be created by showing only a half face against bright light, or multiple shaded iterations of a face. This is used in a set of four postage stamps from Romania (1999). This set includes depiction of unprotected sexual intercourse, as an example for duality of mind, caught between conflicting thoughts.
Emotions of Life and death
A contrast of shades can also be used to show a struggle between life and death. Two stamps from France below show this struggle as a warrior and contrast between pink of health and darkness of illness.
Shades are indeed mysterious. A stroke of a brush can add a story worth a thousand words. Chiaroscuro it is – both bright and dark, alive and mortal, full of hope or a reflection of the past !!
I too learned an interesting word today, thanks Rajnish!!