Page 8 - TOP 10 CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS - Volume VI

glare. Whoever wanted to approach the light or appropriate it for
themselves, like Prometheus, Icarus or Elymas the “magician” (Acts The persuasiveness of Rothko’s liberation of color, which becomes
13:8), was most severely punished. alive in the room, undoubtedly contributed to the fact that many
artists started to create with color light itself in the 1960s and 70s.
The function of light has long been tameable and made practical; This was a time when the lowering costs of new technologies
the sundial divided the day, determined a moment, testified of its such as fluorescent illumination already enabled the lighting of
passing by and foretold the future. The Stonehenge menhirs served everyday living and working places, amusement parks and even
as a calendar which measured the course of the year and dictated more banal locations. Many creators endeavored to find aesthetic
occupations according to its periods, in addition to determining the dimensions in such surroundings and to re-create them in the more
consecrated days and holidays. Windows allowed light to pass into consecrated gallery halls. Dan Flavin from the USA, for example,
closed spaces and thus enabled people to live within. The more created light installations using neon bulbs), and Dušan Tršar
and more sophisticated forms of illumination enlivened spaces at from Slovenia created Light Objects by using neon illumination
night, enabling the light to overcome more and more effectively and plastics.
its opposite, the darkness. This strengthened the philosophical
and religious symbolic meaning of light as the idea of good, as Since then, many artists have dealt with this issue. With light
something pertaining to God. This is why it had a more and more sources in various locations, they create optical illusions in which
important role in the visions of the mystics, such as Pseudo- the observer or the visitor loses all concrete reference points
Dionysius the Areopagite, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, and orientation coordinates. Yet it has become more and more
all of whom meditated on the ascension of the soul towards the demanding to achieve effects which cause disorientation of
Holiest and the Brightest. In the iconography of Christian liturgical the observer’s perception and gravitation, for our senses have
architecture and its ornaments, light played a crucial role in the become used to different impressions caused by the stimulants
dematerialization of the concrete building into a spiritual allegory of and simulacra of modern virtual worlds. The transformation,
a holy state: in the ancient Christian, Byzantine and Romanesque strengthening and fading of color intensities should be minimal,
churches, it was reflected in golden mosaics; in the diaphanous as they need to trick human senses and conceal the reality of the
Gothic cathedral it was reflected in the colored sun rays which world from them by taking into consideration the response of the
shone through the colored windows and the trembling candlelight brain to such changes. The projects depend on specially created
which glittered on the royal gold and purple of liturgical equipment. technology and vast spatial dimensions. That is why the most
The interiors of a Baroque church, with their softly undulating convincing work today is that of authors such as Anish Kapoor and
walls, dramatic withdrawals, roundness’s, hollows, spirals, breaks James Turrell, who became enough famous to be able to provide
and golden altars, all of which capture and reflect sunlight shining financial means for their further work) on thrilling and famous
through the large windows, have become works of art themselves. installations. In 2012, Turrell plans to open an installation inside the
The chapels and altars were decorated with the vast dynamic gigantic crater of an extinct volcano (Roden Crater) in Arizona, a
canvases of Caravaggio, Rubens and others, throbbing in powerful display on which he has been working for several decades. Rimele’s
contrasts of light and darkness. Its scenery, resembling that of the latest installations resemble the subtle character of the works of
theatre, was complemented by ecstatically dynamic statues of the aforementioned artists; the frontal part of the painting-object is
saints’ figures of red ochre and golden draperies, heavy yet softly still present, yet it is in a subordinate position as regards meaning. It
fluttering. With chiaroscuro, the light and its opposite, the darkness, could be said that it is sacrificed to the color light which is reflected
became an allegory of good and evil as well as a challenge, not by its back side.
only in terms of content but also in artistic terms, which were even
more emphasized in the Romantic period. It achieved its climax Light can be established only in the presence of its polar contrast,
with the Plenerists’ representation of hazy, dispelled climate darkness, and it is this darkness that creates the next multi-
phenomena, as well as with other precedents of Impressionism and meaningful archetype, the shadow. Rimele describes his work with
the Impressionists themselves. All the artistic coloristic movements the following words: “The paintings–objects are constructed in
since have believed their most important mission to be the search such a way as to generate color: they are objects of the generation
for ways of dematerializing colored light. of color and they are catchers of light. Thus they become creators
of shadows.” Although shadows are optical phenomena which
After World War II, the emphasis of purely natural or artificial light, can be easily explained, they have always been connected to
which fades away from the canvas surface, reached its climax. By psychical experience; they are often perceived with anxiety and
that point the art of painting, after the period of Impressionism, fear, sometimes with amusement, but they are always elusive and
had successfully freed itself from the illusion of the third spatial intangible. The kingdom of the dead is the kingdom of shadows,
dimension that, according to the laws of perspective from the which is why many interdictions and persecutions as well as
Renaissance, expanded the two-dimensional canvas to an apparent superstitions refer to it. The most important person is usually
depth; in high modernism, Ad Reinhardt, Barnett Newman and Mark the person in the shadow, and sometimes it is the shadow of an
Rothko finally reversed the issue; they endeavored to re-specialize object which confirms that the object is real. The shadow is the
a flat painting, this time by the illusion of the abstract space in front person’s double, the allegory of the soul at the threshold of the
of the canvas. Particularly in Rothko’s work, the application of color invisible and the unknown. It shrinks and stretches, it moves and
vanishes and flows towards the spectator in the form of a veil of deforms, it appears and disappears like a “hole” in normal time
light. The impression of dispersed colorful hazes is even more and space in which the real, tangible forms mingle with their own
intensive and alive when several large canvases are placed close outlines and shadows.
together in a room. That is why Rothko dealt also with installations,
through which he wanted to achieve the universal archetypal These characteristics are mentioned also in Pliny’s tale about the
religious experience. This experience was supposed to enable man contours of the shadow, which testifies of the absence of the
to find his inner balance between the depressiveness of darkness body, while the presence of its projection remains: “Everybody
and the mysteriousness of light. In a chapel in Texas he tried to says that the art of painting began by drawing an outline of a
create a holy place intended for all religions, not belonging to person’s shadow; that is what the primary art of painting was
anyone in particular. It became the center of international cultural, supposed to be like. In the next phase of development, only a
religious and philosophical meetings, at the same time being a limited number of colors were used and that kind of painting was
place of intimate prayer for believers of any religion. called ’monochrome’/…/ The potter Butades of Sicyon invented the