A Brief History
Light has played an important part in the development of humanity, and our very first steps into art and science.
One cant overstate the importance of light in cave painting, the flickering light of a fire adding dynamic movement. Those images then influence the great modern artists of the 20th century, Picasso, Chagall, and Matisse to name a few. From the renaissance master of light and shadow Caravaggio, through Turner through to the Impressionists such as Monet, Cezanne and Renoir, all were enraptured with light, and how that creates its own language with colour and structure. Goethe and Kandinsky breaking down light and colour through philosophy and science, a resonant example of how light links art and science.
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Impressionists were focused on light, and how to capture the truth of how it interacted in nature. In part influenced and rebelling against the rise of photography capturing moments of light, and the steady light of the electric bulb changing how people saw paintings and sculpture, stripping the dynamic movement of a flickering flame.
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Though to the contemporary forefathers of light art such as Dan Flavin who challenged light as art in physical space and architecture, and James Turrell who continues to practice and utilizes light as a spiritual investigation into self and space.
In continuation we have Olafur Eliasson's deep interest in light based exploratory process, and Conrad Shawcross's exploration in to physical structural dynamics and light art among others. Tracy Emin and Chila Burman who delve deep into personal narratives through neon text and sculptural led neon respectively. Mary Weatherford and Malgosia Stepniks integration of led light and neon within their paining practises. Not disregarding the importance of junction artists from the neon bending background such as Michael Flechtner, Linda Sue Price and Leticia Maldonado, or those coming thought from the generative space such as Refik Anadol and Maja Petric to name but a few.
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Varying forms of light art are a key aspect to many contemporary artists practice.
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