Just because light is inherent in visual art,it doesn’t mean it’s obvious or well understood. The artistic treatment of light had a long development,where painters of the renaissance,for example,enjoyed representing the directionality of lateral light,or baroque artists figured out how to make dramatic compositions by distributing light in strong contrasts with darkness.
Turner’s The Deluge,on show at ACMI.Tate
The current show at ACMI,Light:Works from Tate’s Collection,takes up the theme with the industrial revolution,where artists experimented with atmospheric conditions that limit the visibility of solid forms. The marine pictures of Turner marvellously explore the light-catching calibre of air thick with moisture. Using a combination of transparent glaze layers and opaque scumbles,the artist presents the spray and mists as diaphanous curtains over everything behind them.
Turner was no figure painter – as you can tell by hisDeluge of 1805 orThe Angel standing in the sun of 1845 – and the inexactness of any foggy turbulence suited him in many ways. Erupting volcanoes also allow Joseph Wright of Derby and John Martin to make imaginary architecture in the sky,balancing explosive fires with tumbling ash and lava.
The sublime,the scientific and the sultry are all represented through this focus on light in 19th-century painting. There’s no doubt artists of the industrial age enjoyed painting light,sometimes at the expense of form. The upper half of John Constable’s landscapes are sometimes better painted than the lower half,because he was happier eyeballing the luminous skies than the dirt the light lands upon. The distances in the right-hand rise ofBranch Hill Pond,Hampstead Heath of 1825 are awkward to judge.
Sometimes,the glare is too challenging. I sympathise with Monet but his painting ofPoplars on the Epte from 1891,backlit by white clouds,involves difficult contrasts that would be hard to paint without seeming scruffy and unpoetic.
As the exhibition progresses,you become aware of a face-off between the art of painting and contemporary installations. The comparisons are often clever and heighten your curiosity to work out what you enjoy responding to.
The Passing Winter,2005,Yayoi Kusama.Tate
In a room with early-20th-century interiors,a carpet by Philippe Parreno6.00 PM 2000-6 registers the pattern on the floor that might be made by sunlight coming through a window. But you’ll notice that all the edges are equally sharp,whereas a similar motif that appears in Vilhelm Hammershoi’s paintingInterior,Sunlight on the Floor of 1906 correctly shows the edges further from the window as a little fuzzier than those close to the window.
You cannot beat these painters at their own game. But against that,no one would ever worry that the graphic registration of shadows isn’t optically rigorous. Besides,it’s fun to see the rays from a window embedded in the carpet when the window doesn’t exist.
Knockout:Bridget Riley’s Nataraja.Tate
In contrast to the earnest character of the paintings,the installations seem playful. Yayoi Kusama’s silver cubeThe Passing Winter of 2005 has small circular windows that seem to open up an infinity of mirrored discs. Olafur Eliasson’s sculptureStardust Particle from 2014 is a spherical frame with internal skins that dangles in a beam of light. The reflections are almost random,in the same way that we might come across tiny bits of burning suns (stardust) that inspired the shape.
Despite competition from James Turrell’s LED light installationRaemar,Blue from 1969,the knockout work from the 20th century is Bridget Riley’sNataraja of 1993. It isn’t really about light but jumpy rhythms created through regular contrasts of colour.
The exhibition is timely because contemporary artists are increasingly electrified. Paint-free light features in other exhibitions in Melbourne,from Bruce Munro at Heide Museum of Modern Art to Domenico de Clario at Occasional Space (516 Rathdowne St,North Carlton) and the popularLightscape at the Royal Botanical Gardens.
Light:Works from Tate’s Collection is atACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) until November 13.
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