Allegory of the Cave Painting

"To a Friend of Light: If you want to spare your eyes and your mind, follow the sun from the shadows behind." (Nietzsche, The Gay Science) From the Age of Enlightenment, as we know, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave considered light as a metaphore for knowledge. Many words in English still have this same connotation to the present day, for example word “enlightenment”. Light—especially light from the sun—can be considered metaphorically to human reason, or it may be linked to the scientific revolution that took place during the Age of Enlightenment. On the other hand, the metaphore of a shadow represents a state of ignorance, of mere illusions, of darkness, again which has its roots from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in which prisoners were chained to a wall staring at shadows flickering in the darkness mistake their shadowy illusions for reality. Nietzsche was aware of the conceptual dichotomy between these metaphors and he playfully inverted the expected relationship between the two: sun and shadow, light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance. According to Nietzsche, the supposedly “objective” truth and knowledge, represented metaphorically by the sun, are problematic because the very notion of truth itself is already deeply metaphorical. Our concepts, our descriptions, our words and terms, our mental images, and all of our abstract representations are merely metaphors for reality, not the crystal-clear and illuminating windows into reality that rationalists and scientists in the Western philosophical tradition have historically taken them to be. So this contrast inspired me to paint this artwork. You are able to see beauty and ugliness in both sides or work. Also, as we already know in Greek philosophy, the state of the soul was divided into eros and thanatos. The fact is that each of us has good and bad qualities, and according to whether we feed more eros or thanatos, that side will prevail. That is why it is important to separate these concepts. We can also look at this symbolism from the perspective of religion, such as Islam. Islam says "both paradise and hell search in yourself" which again refers to the already mentioned eros and thanatos. This image has a huge symbolism. Darker and lighter colors are linked to eros and thanatos, but the fact is that both sides have some artistic beauty, which brings us back to Nietzsche's concept of understanding sun and shadow, darkness and light, good and bad, and that is the fact that in both extremes there are beauties which are difficult to spot at the first glance.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:15.7 W x 11.8 H x 0.8 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.