Light and Art: A Glimpse of the Future

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Experiment Station

Leo Villareal, Scramble, 2011. Light-emitting diodes, Mac mini, custom software, circuitry, wood, Plexiglas 60 x 60 x 8 in. Ed. 2/3, The Drier Fund for Acquisitions, 2012. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. © Leo Villareal, Courtesy of Conner Contemporary. Photo: James Ewing

As an intern in the Phillips’s education department, I have handled a variety of tasks, most of which allow for a creative approach or solution. When my supervisor asked me to write about something that interested me for this blog, I saw it as an opportunity to connect my interest in art and museums with my interest in interior design. As I walked through the galleries, Leo Villareal’s Scramble (2011) caught my attention–I stood in front of it, captivated by the changing lights. As I researched Villareal’s intent and inspiration, I made a connection between his work and a lighting design class I’m currently taking. I was inspired to look at LED lights from both an artist’s and an interior designer’s point of view and became curious about how LED lights affect the art world.

LED (light emitting diode) lights, were created over 50 years ago. What makes this light source different from halogen and incandescent lights is that it is more energy efficient and has a longer lamp life. Therefore, it is a very sustainable product. This is crucial today, when every industry is beginning to strive to be as sustainable and environmentally conscious as possible. At first LED lights were only available in warm colors, such as yellow, red, and orange, but with time new colors were developed, making LED an extremely versatile light source.

So where will this technology go from here? How is it going to affect art and museums? In most art museums, halogen lights are used in gallery spaces, but with the improvement of LED lights and their energy efficiency, long lamp life, and high color rendering index, LED lighting has been tested and is being considered as an alternative source for museum lighting. One of the biggest concerns in changing lighting in the gallery spaces of museums is the effects it will have on the artwork and the number of hours the art can be exposed to the light before it begins to deteriorate. The Getty Conservation Institute has concluded that LED lights perform slightly better than halogens and will therefore be beneficial in art museums.

Even though these changes are forthcoming, LED lights can already be seen in the work of artists such as Jenny Holzer, Liu Dao, and Leo Villareal. All of these works are installation pieces that cause a sense of awe in the viewer. When asked why he chose to work with light, Villareal explained that while he was getting his master’s degree from NYU in Interactive Telecommunications Programming he realized that he could incorporate light into his work and create an interesting piece with a small amount of information. Scramble pays homage to the work of Frank Stella, who Villareal met at The Phillips Collection. The work is composed of a light box that rapidly changes colors, mimicking the colors found in Frank Stella’s Scramble. Therefore, Villareal’s piece can be understood as a contemporary take on Stella’s work.

LED lights are a new technology that has affected both the medium and the display of art while at the same time adding a sustainable aspect to both.

Veronica Sesana, Education Undergraduate Intern

Cosmic Connections

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Experiment Station

Leo Villareal, Cosmos, 2012. White LED lights, custom software, and electrical hardware. Acquired through the generosity of Lisa and Richard Baker, Class of 1988. Photo: James Ewing

Cornell University’s Johnson Museum of Art opened a cosmic new light installation in their elevated sculpture court last month. Leo Villareal, Cosmos, 2012. White LED lights, custom software, and electrical hardware. Acquired through the generosity of Lisa and Richard Baker, Class of 1988. Photo: James Ewing

If you’ve traversed the National Gallery of Art’s concourse walkway in the past four years or followed the emanating glow into a small gallery upstairs in the Phillips house over the past few months, Leo Villareal’s interest in light’s cosmic, infinite possibilities will come as no surprise. Last month, the artist’s latest installation, Cosmos, was unveiled in the sculpture court at Cornell University’s Johnson Museum of Art. It involves twelve thousand LEDs and a zero gravity bench. Two years in the making, this artwork pays tribute to the late Cornell astronomy professor Carl Sagan, who said in the introduction to his 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage:

Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us—there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

Hear Sagan deliver these words in the clip below and, if you will be anywhere near Ithaca, NY, this holiday season and have a chance to experience Villareal’s Cosmos in person, please share your reactions in the comments.

Six Degrees of Separation: A Tour

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Experiment Station

1˚CAGE

Photo: Joshua Navarro

Start your visit on the 2nd floor of The Phillips Collection, outside the Rothko Room, and discover watercolors by John Cage. Primarily known as an avant-garde composer, Cage turned the sounds of an audience’s awkward, ambient shuffling into music. (Return to the museum at 4 pm on September 6 for a full Cage experience, as part of the John Cage Centennial Festival, starting with a panel discussion on Cage’s work and collaborations, including his friendship with Jasper Johns, and culminating with a performance by Irvine Arditti of the impossible-to-perform Freeman Etudes for solo violin.)

2˚JOHNS

Photo: Cecilia Wichmann

Continue up the curving stairway to special exhibition Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme, and you’ll find prints by Johns that share in Cage’s sense of humor. Johns too makes art out of his audience in works like High School Days (1969), a lead embossed shoe of the kind that lends a naughty view when strategically polished and placed beneath a woman’s skirt. Johns has embedded a mirror in the toe so the curious viewer glimpses only his or her own eye. He made this innovative lead relief and others at Los Angeles print publisher Gemini G.E.L. Towards the end of the exhibition look for Ocean (1994), a lithograph of a dancer leaping over abstracted map forms. The dancer is none other than Merce Cunnningham, the avant-garde choreographer who was also a friend to Johns and Cage.

3˚STELLA

Photo: Kate Boone

In 1967, Frank Stella designed a set and costumes for a dance piece by Cunningham named Scramble. That same year, he created his first prints and, like Johns, collaborated with Gemini G.E.L. In one print made that year, Marriage of Reason and Squalor, Stella revisited his iconic 1959 black painting. Walk from the Johns exhibition into the original Phillips house, through the Main Gallery, down a few steps, and past the Klees, and you’ll find Stella’s small work on paper, which was gifted to the Phillips in 1991.

4˚VILLAREAL

Photo: Joshua Navarro

A luminous glow beckons you beyond Stella’s print, into a gallery with a fireplace, a single bench, and a solitary 60″ x 60″ (but digitally infinite) artwork. Scramble (2011) is Leo Villareal’s response to a conversation he shared with Frank Stella as part of a panel discussion on Kandinsky at the Phillips the previous year. Sharing a name with Stella’s Cunningham collaboration, this work reminds of motion and dance with LEDs relentlessly shifting (and never repeating) their patterns of color. Visitors remark that the contemporary color field is like millions of digital Rothkos.

5˚ROTHKO

Photo: Robert Lautman

With your mind thus saturated (and somewhat scrambled), you may now be craving a respite in the Rothko Room. Wind your way back to the 2nd floor of the Goh Annex, where you began with Cage, and enter the small chamber which is also appointed with a single bench (that was the artist’s idea). The Rothko Room is always there for you. (The permanent, meditative installation inspired a new commission, something to look forward to next year, but for now the scent of beeswax remains absent from your tour.)

6˚KELLY

Photo: Robert Lautman

Turn left out of the Rothko Room toward a stairway and red wall. Pause on the landing and look out the window. Straight ahead, on the far wall of the courtyard, floats Ellsworth Kelly’s swooping untitled bronze. Villareal’s recent body of work includes a Kelly-inspired piece, Coded Spectrum, in addition to his work in conversation with Stella.

Cecilia Wichmann, Publicity and Marketing Manager