Light art

Light art. A general term for works that use artificial light (generally electric) as an artistic medium of its own or as an important constituent of a piece. The major pioneer of light art was the Danish-American artist Thomas Wilfred, who made his first small works in this vein in 1905, but the idea can be traced back to the 18th century, when the French scientist Louis-Bertrand Castel became interested in the relationship between sound and colour (both of which, he argued, were products of vibration) and constructed various ‘ocular harpsichords', some of which incorporated coloured glass. His theories do not seem to have been followed up until the early 20th century, when the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin envisaged a similar type of ‘colour organ’ to perform in his orchestral work Prometheus; it was premiered in 1911, but the light-show accompaniment proved impracticable. Twelve years later, in 1923, Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné constructed a piano that produced light as well as sound effects, and various other experiments with light art were made in the interwar years—by Moholy-Nagy, for example. Hitler's architect Albert Speer (see NATIONAL SOCIALIST ART) used dramatic arrays of searchlights at Nazi rallies in a way that anticipated the son et lumière spectacles now popular as tourist entertainments, and soon after the Second World War Gyula Košice, in 1946, is credited with being the first artist to make a sculpture consisting essentially of neon tubing (a decade earlier the Czech sculptor Zdeněk Pešánek (1896–1965) had used neon, but not as the main constituent of a work). In the 1950s Nicolas Schöffer made some highly ambitious sculptures incorporating light effects, but it was not until the 1960s that it is possible to think of Light art constituting a movement. During this decade there were several large exhibitions of Light art in Europe and the USA (for example ‘Light, Motion, Space’ at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis in 1968) and Light art often overlapped with other genres, particularly Kinetic art, but also for example Minimal art (notably in the work of Dan Flavin, who typically used fluorescent tubes rather than neon) and Pop art (notably in the work of Chryssa). In the 1960s, also, lasers and holography (which was made possible by lasers) became available to the artist. Lasers have been used most characteristically to create spectacular nocturnal displays, the pioneer in this field being the American artist Rockne Krebs (1938– ), who created his first such show in Buffalo, New York, in 1971. Many artists, including Salvador Dalí, have experimented with holograms, and they have been sold by leading dealers such as Leo Castelli, but in the art world holography is generally regarded as a curiosity rather than a serious means of expression.

Thomas Wilfred used the word ‘Lumia’ to refer to his works, and the term Luminism is now sometimes used as an alternative to ‘Light art'. However, this usage is potentially confusing, as the term ‘Luminism’ already has other meanings in art-historical writing