As far back as 32,000 years ago, prehistoric cave artists skillfully used modeling shadows to give their horses and bison volume. A few thousand years ago ancient Egyptian and then ancient Greek art presented human forms in shadow-style silhouette. But cast shadows do not appear in Western art until about 400 BCE in Athens. It was only after shadows had become an established, if controversial, part of representation that classical writers claimed that art itself had begun with the tracing of a human shadow. Greeks and Romans were the first to make the transition from modeling shadows to cast shadows, a practice that implied a consistent light source, a fixed point of view, and an understanding of geometric projection. In fact, what we might now call “shadow studies” ― the exploration of shadows in their various artistic representations ― has its roots in ancient Athens. Ever since, the practice of portraying shadows has evolved along with critical analysis of them, as artists and theoreticians have engaged in an ongoing debate about the significance of shadow representation.
* geometric: 기하학의