Glorious shadows cast over art and our world

Vampires cast none. Pilgrims in ancient Greece who lost theirs on entering a temple of Zeus would die within the year, they said, and in Equatorial Africa some dreaded going out at noon for fear of discovering theirs had gone. The shadow - that ever-elusive and ever-changing phenomenon - is an integral part of a human being: to lose it is to die. So informs us Italian academic and critic Lea Vergine, curator of The Shadow, the latest high-quality exhibition at Compton Verney, near Banbury.

The shadow carries with it multitudinous meanings and associations. It offers itself to the imagination of storytellers, to superstitions, fables, the scrutiny of scientists, psychologists, philosophers, reflecting the values and beliefs of a society as well as its psychological state.

As this exhibition demonstrates, the shadow also offers infinite possibilities for artistic expression. From Egyptian tomb paintings to early Renaissance art, they have been a constant source of inspiration, and remain so, explored by modern and contemporary artists around the world through the medium of installation, video and photography.

This is the first extensive group exhibition to focus on the psychological and symbolic meaning attached to the shadow, and this is its only UK showing. Organised by Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena and MAN, it features artists such as Doug Aitken, Laurie Anderson, Carlo Benvenuto, Christian Boltanski, Fabrizio Corneli, Ceal Floyer, Mona Hatoum, Gary Hill, Tracey Moffatt, Marvin E. Newman, Anri Sala, Fiona Tan and Andy Warhol.

A typist clattering away in the glazed stairwell, an artwork by William Wegman, begins the show. Next is Fabrizio Corneli's projection Grande Volante 1, 2000, a man flying out of the wall in a work that might have been outside had it not been for the rainy weather.

Christian Boltanski creates images that remind us of the origins of art, a time when a fire within a cave would have created a forever changing backdrop of flickering shadows. The Candles, 1986, which has four candles throwing shadows over copper figurines on to the two back walls of the gallery, would have been better in a room of its own, however: a darker uninterrupted space where the hovering human shapes could cast their own spell, a Plato's cave of sorts where thoughts of shadows as bearers of imperfect knowledge could be kindled.

Instead, they competed for attention with Nino Longobardi's drawing of a shadow detaching itself from its skeleton body to take on the solid form of a crocodile: reversing the usual expectations of form and shadow.

Fiona Tan's work also reverses expectations; inverts them, in fact. Downside Up, 2002 is a clever idea that while showing the power of shadow is also fun. The camera focuses on the shadows, not on the people who make them, a simple technique that makes time seem to slow down. The elongated otherworldly figures walking across the screen create a feeling of wonder about journeys through life, aided by lines from a poem that "longs for time when the earth was still flat".

Tucked into a dark corner of a room further on is Laurie Anderson's 1975 piece, At the Shrink's. In this early example of work from an artist best known for performance, Anderson plays with the idea of finding a way of doing a performance without being there' to offer in brilliant pocket-sized projection a woman at her analyst's reduced to a diminutive figure sitting, talking away, in the corner, alone. It was too noisy in the gallery to hear what she was actually saying, but you wonder how much of this is the artist's alter-ego and how much being shrunk at the shrink's is a visual critique of psychoanalysis.

Weaving your way though the exhibition, you pass Tracey Moffatt's melodramatic narrative of mistress and Aboriginal maid in a changing Australian society at the turn of the last century in a series of photogravures.

Elsewhere, phantoms morph into shambling figures in the corridors of an institution as the psyche of each breaks free, a slide projection of a nail casting a shadow on a wall invites questions about illusion, and ghost crabs scurrying over the seashore at night herded by torchlight in Anri Sala's Ghostgames depict creatures isolated and transfixed by the environment they find themselves in.

The final room has Andy Warhol's 1981 screenprint The Shadow and Mona Hatoum's Misbah, a rotating lantern that floods its gallery with stars and nursery figures. Too dizzy-making for me, I retreated gratefully to a seat at the back of Doug Aitken's Lighttrain, 2005, a five-channel video installation with highly-charged back-up rhythm that hints at Hollywood thrillers and spy movies. Humans are absent: the shadow is the hero, tailed by the camera on a journey through bleak desert and city landscapes.

A small complementary exhibition of late candlelight paintings by George de La Tour (1593-1652) follows, along with etchings by Jacques Callot. This provides a rare opportunity to see work of this 17th-century French painter. Rediscovered as a noteworthy artist only in the 20th century with many of his works incorrectly attributed, only three of La Tour's works are in British collections.

To take one example, his oil painting of St Jerome Reading (c1624), to my mind exquisite, is the best here. Thinly painted, his handling of the artificial light coming through the impossibly translucent page is masterly. The usual artistic conventions are absent; it is merely a monk reading a message, superb in its simplicity.

It also happens to be the one with the longest known history, having been acquired by King Charles II around 1660 in exile in the Netherlands. The king did not know he had a La Tour, but neither did any monarch (it is part of the Royal Collection) until it was identified during preparations for a Paris exhibition in 1972.

Both exhibitions run until September 9 at Compton Verney, Warwickshire, only an hour's drive away: take the M40 north to Junction 12, then follow signs. Enjoy!