Light and Space

movement c. 1960s-1970s Southern California United States

Light and Space is a loosely affiliated movement that emerged in Southern California in the 1960s, related to op art, minimalism and geometric abstraction, and influenced by John McLaughlin's spare abstractions. Its real subject is perception itself: artists direct natural light, embed neon and fluorescent tubes in objects, or work with glass, resin and cast acrylic so the viewer's experience of light, volume and scale becomes the work. Materials and fabrication methods were often borrowed from the region's aerospace and engineering industries. The name dates from the 1971 UCLA exhibition 'Transparency, Reflection, Light, Space: Four Artists', and the movement is closely related to the glossy industrial surfaces of Finish/Fetish. Shown at the 1976 Venice Biennale and surveyed in 'Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface' (2011), it permanently changed how contemporary art treats atmosphere as an artistic material.

James Turrell 's " Dividing the Light " (2007), a skyspace art installation at Pomona College
James Turrell 's " Dividing the Light " (2007), a skyspace art installation at Pomona CollegeCC BY-SA 4.0 (credit: Sdkb) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Light treated as the primary material: embedded neon, fluorescent tubes or directed natural light
  • Flawlessly finished industrial surfaces - cast acrylic, resin and glass with high-gloss polish
  • Perceptual ambiguity: edges dissolve, volumes seem to float, shift or recede as the viewer moves
  • Works conditioned by their surroundings, often altering the gallery space itself
  • Subtle gradations of transparency and color instead of depicted imagery
  • Reduced near-abstract forms - columns, cubes, orbs, scrims - that frame the act of seeing

Key figures

  • James Turrell (b. 1943) — Skyspaces and projection works that carried the movement's perceptual program worldwide
  • Robert Irwin (1928-2020) — Discs, scrims and gardens that make the viewer's act of seeing the true subject
  • Larry Bell (b. 1939) — Vacuum-coated glass cubes trading in transparency, reflection and visual ambiguity
  • Helen Pashgian (b. 1933) — Cast acrylic spheres and columns glowing as if lit from within
  • De Wain Valentine (1936-2022) — Monumental polished polyester-resin slabs in oceanic color gradients

Example works

Sources

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