For Syntonics Conference, Santa Fe, May 2005

THE EXPLOSION OF LIGHT IN MODERN ART:

From Turner to Turrell. Alison Armstrong©2005

I am honored be speaking to a room full of Healers.

Coming as I do, not from a scientific background, but from
literature and the visual arts, the issues of healing or
wholeness arise indirectly—in my teaching and in my own
creative work. The notion of Art versus Science is as
misleading a dichotomy as that between Darkness and Light;
as light and dark together produce color and create vision, so
do the arts and sciences together produce insight.
It is not the deliberate intention of art to be “therapeutic”
(leaving aside the notions of art-therapy in “art education” or
of Aristotle’s observation of the cathartic function of Greek
tragedy). However, the effect of great art or “fine” art is
“healing” at a psychological level that may not be quantified
nor determined scientifically (in the sense of repeatable
experiments). A text is different each time it is read; a
painting changes each time it is viewed. Any therapeutic
effects of art are not necessarily the intention of the artist.
And yet, a transcendent recreation of the world, material and
spiritual, can be the ultimate result of contemplating art.
 2

Theorists who sought to bring to consciousness the beneficial

functions of art include not only Aristotle (who described the
phenomenon of the rainbow as well as the function of
Sophocles’ plays); Leonardo da Vinci (who, in the
Renaissance, saw drawing & painting as scientific means of
study); Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky [a founder of the
Moscow Linguistic Circle 1915 who described the “strange-
making” or Ostranenie function of art]; German Romantic
poet, statesman, & idealist philosopher Johann von Goethe
[1749-1832] who rebelled against Newton’s perceived
“materialism”; chemist M-E. Chevreul (1786 -1889] who
influenced many painter, i.e., Pissarro directed the
Impressionists to Chevreul’s explication of simultaneous
contrast); Anthroposophist/Educator Rudolph Steiner [1861-
1925]; musician/painter/Bauhaus teacher W. Kandinsky
[1866-1944]. Other thinkers who were to have a direct
influence on painters in the late 19th & early 20th centuries
included James Sowerby, Otto Runge, Ogden Rood, Wilhelm
Ostwald [1853-1932] who defined 28 key colors in a double
cone; Helmholtz, Maxwell, and Young who supplanted
Chevreul after the establishment of the 3-receptor theory of
vision; and Albert Munsell [1858-1915] who developed ten
 3

hues in a vertical color “tree” that addressed the grey scale as

well as brilliance/dullness.
All were concerned with perception, the phenomena of after-
images, and the vibrations of light and sound. Some explored
analogies between music and painting as did Kandinsky (also
a musician), who experienced involuntary synaesthesia. He
corresponded with composer Arnold Schoenberg [1874-
1951] – who also painted – in an attempt to discover
universal connections between colors and musical tones.
Other modernist composers, Messaien and Scriabin,
composed music with specific color effects in mind; the latter
wrote Prometheus [1922] scored for “Luce” – a series of
light projections to be “played” onto a screen above the
orchestra on a color organ. Painters Paul Klee (also a
musician) and Robert Delaunay incorporated musical terms
and concerns with duration and intervals, or the temporal,
into the spatial compositions of paintings. These efforts were
symptomatic of modernist concerns with “audition coloree” –
to understand (whether we experience synaesthesia or not)
how we perceive vibrations of light and sound, a correlation
also made by Isaac Newton in Opticks (1704) who had added
Indigo to the six hues of the perceived spectrum in order to
match with the seven tones of the diatonic scale.i Newton
 4

had suggested a general theory based on an analogy with

hearing:
“Do not several sorts of rays make vibrations of
several bignesses which, according to their bignesses
excite sensations of several colors after the manner
of vibrations of the air, according to their several
bignesses, excite sensations of various sounds?
May not the harmony and discord of colors arise
from the proportions of the vibrations propagated
through fibres of the optic nerves into the brain as
the harmony and discord of sounds arise from
the proportions of the vibrations of the air?”

As western culture moved away from the rationality of

Newton, Descartes and other Natural Philosophers of the
“Enlightenment,” through 19th century Romanticism with
Goethe and into the 20th century with Impressionism,
Cubism, and the many other -isms Modernist era – for
Kandinsky, Itten, Albers, Klee, Moholy-Nagy – all Bauhaus
teachers (many influenced by Rudolf Steiner), as well as the
Italian Futurists Balla and Severini, painting was released
from its obligation to “realistic” representation. They strove
to depict speed, light, abstract form and the interaction of
 5

color. . .and ultimately to do away not only with Narrative

and the Object, but the medium itself. By the time we get to
Rothko’s large shimmering fields of color, the “envelope” of
atmosphere that was utilized in Monet’s landscapes has
become the ‘subject’ or rather the impalpable vehicle for a
spiritual experience in the viewer. Paint, canvas, even color
itself, is a mere necessary means of materially conveying the
impalpable. Finally, with Thomas Wilfred, Robert Irwin, and
James Turrell there is no vehicle—the air itself is saturated
with formless intense hues, particularly in Turrell’s
Gansfelden.
Kandinsky, in his “Reminiscences” records a moment
when, entering his studio and seeing his own painting on its
side, at first did not recognize its ‘subject’ and then realized
that a painting might be only “about” color and form in
themselves. His book, “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”
which clearly shows influence from Steiner regarding the
emotional “properties” of various colors, was symptomatic of
the great interest in the connection between Art and the
Spiritual, which had its origins in the Romantic era.
The findings of Chevreulii influenced Impressionists
Pissarro, Serusier, Monet—as well as van Gogh, Seurat, and
 6

Delaunay (who, in turn, influenced Klee)…all interested in

techniques of optical mixing.
Interest in pure color evolved: color as harmony, the use of
opaque pigments (often used in glazes as well as juxtaposed
dots of pure primaries) to create the illusion of colored light
as well as of form and space, and finally colored light was
freed from the medium of pigment to become the subject
itself, as in the Lumia of Thomas Wilfred [1930s-60s] and
contemporary light installations. James Turrell [b. 1943]
who was influenced by Turner’s paintings, has challenged
Kandinsky’s claim that Color depends upon Form.
The enchantment of the rainbow, of after images, of the
refrangibility of light into color for Aristotle, for the 10th
century Alhazen, for the 17th-18th century Newton is with us
today as much as ever.
I took inspiration for this talk from Arthur Zajonc’s book,
Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and the
Mind, in which he refers to “the explosion of light” in
modern art…and observes that Goethe’s initial impulse
toward color studies was derived not from science but from
art.
Goethe’s awareness of afer-image effects occurs in his 1810
Farbenlehre (Theory of Colors)iii:
 7

“I had entered an inn towards evening and, as

a well-favored girl with a brilliantly fair com-
plexion, black hair, and scarlet bodice, came
into the room, I looked attentively at her as
she stood before me at some distance in half
shadow. As she…turned away I saw on the
white wall now before me a black face surrounded
with a bright light, while the dress of the perfectly
distinct figure appeared a beautiful sea-green.”
Goethe, in his revolt against Newton, nevertheless shared in
Newton’s attitude that it was necessary (as a scientific
inquirer) to work inductively, without hypotheses, but strictly
from observation for insight into “Urphaenomena.” The
fundamental difference in their methods of handling the
triangular prism is perhaps symptomatic of the difference
between the “rational” Enlightenment personality and the
“emotional” Romantic one. While Newton held his prism
away from his eyes so that the “corpuscular rays” shone un-
obstructed from the pinhole in the window blind through the
darkened room and into the prism to be refracted in a
rainbow spectrum, the angles of whose various perceptible
hues could be recorded (with help from an assistant) and
whose angles could be mathematically measured, and,
 8

furthermore, when recombined through a second prism,

shown to reconstitute into white light. Goethe, however,
hurriedly grabbed a prism from a borrowed set that he was
late in returning to its owner, held it to his eye, and observed
two “spectra”—one of cool hues (blues), the other the warm
hues (yellow/reds) as they displayed themselves along the
edges of a body. We can do the same by standing in the sun
and looking, with prism held to the eyes, at the edges of a
sheet of white paper held against a dark background.
Naturally, with the methods of observation varying, the
results varied. Goethe claimed that Newton was wrong!
And yet—what the Romantic poet Goethe derived from his
approach was to have reverberations, not in the scientific
arena so much as in that of the spiritual and artistic. [He was
corresponding with the painter Philipp Otto Runge who
brought out his own study of color harmony with Die
Farbenkugel (a 3-dimensional sphere, an improvement on
the color wheel and color triangles) the same year as
Goethe’s Theory of Colors, 1810.] (I recently saw an original
copy of Farbenkugel for sale at Ursus Books in New York
for $30,000!) For Goethe, insight into Nature was to aid
painters and bring a general philosophical understanding of
the marvels we perceive the natural world.
 9

Like Goethe, Chevreul utilized the phenomenon of the

“after-image” in his Principles of Harmony & Contrast of
Colors (1839). This extensive study resulted from his work
on problems of juxtaposition of colored threads in the
Gobelin tapestry factory that had hired him in his capacity as
renowned chemist. Subsequently, Chevreul’s work would
influence certain painters, notably Seurat in his experiments
with pointillism. He had begun giving lectures on color to art
audiences in the mid-1830s; he did not “discover” the laws of
simultaneous contrast of colors but formulated and gave
visual examples of a phenomenon already known to artists—
that the apparent hue and value of a patch of color changes
with its background, warmer against a cool ground, lighter
against a dark one, etc. Chevreul’s contribution was a
reformulation of 18th century studio practices in the language
of early 19th century psychology and physical science,
making the knowledge more accessible.
Chevreul’s authority would be superceded by the work of
Hermann von Helmholtz , for the former failed to make the
distinction between the primary colors of pigments and those
of light.
[see Gamwell, pp.68ff]
 10

As the Industrial Revolution was gaining strength, some

resisted it (as did the visionary early Romantic William Blake
who railed against the smoke-filled forests as well as
Newton’s materialism & destruction of the mystery of light
by mathematically measuring it); others, including English
painter JMW Turner [dates], rejoiced in its newfound kinetic
energy. [Slides: Steam & Speed] Likewise, the Italian
Futurists would, in the early years of the 20th century, rejoice
in the machine age. [Such enthusiasm, generated prior to
WWI, would become politically polarized by the 1930s
(mainly by Futurist Marinetti) into fascism.]

OPTICAL MIXING & SIMULTANEOUS CONTRAST:

SEURAT, MONET, DELAUNAY, SEVERINI

….
Robert Delaunay [dates] realized the failure of pointillism:
the dots were not small enough, the viewing distance
impossible to establish for accurate optical mixing. Rather,
he painted directly from color and light (as in his “windows”
series).
 11

In 1912 (just after the appearance of Kandinsky’s

Concerning the Spiritual in Art) Paul Klee translated
Delaunay’s essay “On Light” for the German Expressionist
magazine Der Sturm; he echoes the ideas of Kandinsky,
Albers, and Klee (all Bauhaus professors) in that he did not
want art to be subservient any longer to depicting Objects;
the painter was to do away with description and narrative.
Light Itself was now to be treated as the subject of painting,
independent of representation. This attitude was true as well
for Johannes Itten (who founded the color course at the
Bauhaus) as for Lazlo Moholy-Nagy (who arrived late at the
Bauhaus and explored studies of light-sculpture there and
later in America).

RUDOLF STEINER’S SEARCH FOR PEACHBLOSSOM

Steiner called his path, Anthroposophy, toward “seeing into”
the ‘new spiritual science’ of the modern age because it
recognizes the resources of our thinking and feeling and
willing as well as the ‘membranes’ through which they may
shine. Anthroposophy, he said, is the inner language of
anthropology; it probes the question of what is it to be
human?iv
The etheric body [see H. Paultz in Journal of Anthroposophy, pp. 22ff]
 12

In Germany in the 1920s, Steiner guided a series of optical experiments designed

to extend Goethe’s principles of color….

COLOR AS FORM: SERUSIER, KANDINSKY,

MALEVICH

DARK LIGHT: MANET, MATISSE, ROTHKO,

REINHARDT
According to my I Ching book, “Darkness is the receptive
medium through which light travels…an energy of its own
that attracts light. Interaction between light and dark take
place in the cosmic consciousness; through their interaction
cosmic consciousness is compressed into forms and again is
transformed from form to non-form.”
 13

This statement is akin to the observations of Goethe [that

colors are formed from the interaction or juxtaposition of
light and a dark edge].
When “dark light” is evidenced in painting, we recall
Zajonc’s statement that the black of outer space “shines”
through the atmosphere to create the perceived blue of
polarized light. “Chiaroscuro” has been well documented in
painting since the Renaissance: Light seeming to emerge
from a dark ground, or literally, “clear/obscure.”

COLOR AS VIBRATIONAL FIELDS: MATISSE,

ROTHKO, ALBERS, ANUZKIEWICZ
For Albers [1888-1976], color is an autonomic aesthetic
element, interacting with itself. His short book, Interaction
of Color has been in print since the 70s and is a standard text
for many art history and studio courses. In the extensive
“Homage to the Square” series, Albers explores the spatial
movement as well as the apparent changes in value or even
hue of colors in juxtaposition devoid of ‘meaningful’ content.
Most, painted on masonite, eliminate painterly brushstrokes
or other texture in order to focus on the fields of color.
Similar paintings were made by Beuys and Klein—with the
 14

claim that they depicted a spiritual experience [see Kuspit in

Spiritual in Abstract Art]

Mark Rothko: [1903-1971] His color fields, which seem to

hover in front of an undefined background, he called
“organisms” that begin to realize themselves exactly at the
moment when the artist finishes his work. He was influenced
in part by the celestial light and meditative quiet of Fra
Angelico’s frescoes in the monastery of San Marco in
Florence, Italy. Rothko’s highly thinned pigments were
applied with very light fast brush strokes, as if ‘blown’ onto
the canvas.

Slides:

COLOR AS CODE: BETH AMES SWARTZ’s HEALING

ART: 1st Chakra—Red: Security
2nd Chakra—Orange: Relatedess/connectedness/
self-validation
3rd Chakra—Yellow: Power ctr/will/focus/efficiency
4th Chakra—Green: Heart/love/integration/respect
5th Chakra—Blue: Throat/voice/ability to hear & express
authenticity of self/synaesthesia/connections
6th Chakra—Indigo: Head/3rd eye/Divine
 15

vision/transpersonal/expanded
sense/transformation of other chakra energies
7th Chakra—Violet & gold: Crown of head/reintegration of
spirit & Nature/aesthetic sense of reality/bliss

COLOR AS PURE LIGHT: THOMAS WILFRED, DAN

FLAVIN, JAMES TURRELL

A last Theosophical Comment:

I came across the following use of color as analogy in The
Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett (1924)v – [Sinnet was
helping Madame Blavatsky to establish her Theosophical
society in London:]
“How shall I teach you to read and…even compre-
hend a language of which no alphabet is palpable,
or words audible to you have been invented!…
suppose I were to describe to you the hues of those
color rays that lie beyond the so-called ‘visible
spectrum’ – rays invisible to all but a very few
even among Us; to explain how we can fix in
space any one of the so-called subjective or
accidental colors—the complement (to speak
mathematically) moreover, of any other given
color of a dichromatic body (which sounds like
 16

an absurdity), could you comprehend…their

optical effect or even my meaning? And since
you see them not, such rays, nor can know
them, nor have you any names for them as yet in
Science, if I were to tell you: ‘My good friend…
if you please, without moving…try…and produce
before your eyes the whole solar spectrum
decomposed into fourteen Prismatic Colors (seven
being complementary), as it is but with the help of
that occult light that you can see me from a distance
and I see you’…would you not be likely to retort
…that as there never were but seven (now three)
primary colors which, moreover, have never yet
by any known physical process been seen decom-
posed further than the seven prismatic hues—my
invitation was as ‘unscientific’ as absurd?
“I had better go and search for my mythical
‘dichromatic’ and solar ‘pairs’ in Tibet, for
modern science has hitherto been unable to
bring under any theory even so simple a pheno-
menon as the colors of all such dichromatic
bodies. And YET—truth know—these colors
are objective enough!
 17

“How could you make yourself understood—

command those semi-intelligent Forces whose
means of communicating with us are not through
spoken words but through Sounds and Colours,
in correlations between the vibrations of the two?
For Sound, Light, and Colours are the main factors
in forming these grades of Intelligences, these
Beings of whose very existence you have no
conception….”
Reconsider Arthur Zajonc’s sub-title: “The Entwined
History of Light and the Mind.” Is it possible that we
humans are, as Rudolf Steiner taught, and as the
Mahatma K.H. indicates above, evolving into more
sensitive (and moral) perceptual capabilities that are
aligned with or signified in perceptions of light, color—
and by extension sound waves? Is the clue to the
development of a Unified Field Theory, or String Theory
indicated? If so, art may be the key to, and expression
of, that expansion of consciousness and perception.
In his discussion of Goethe, Zajonc notes:
“One cannot take truth by force, but
perhaps indirectly, through phenomena,
sign, and symbol we may approach her…
 18

‘We discern [the True, which is the Divine]

only in reflection…in appearances…’.”vi
We discern Light itself only AS reflection; without
objects in space to reflect, refract, polarize we would see
no light, no color, no objects. Without light we lose the
world, not of solid objects, but of the unspoken language
of transcendence.
Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo (c1889),
“The painter of the future is a colorist such as has
never been seen before.”
Conclusion:
Goethe’s fairy tale, “The Green Snake & the Beautiful Lady”
concludes in a conversation between the Golden King and the
Serpent with:
What is more glorious than gold?
Light!
What is more quickening than light?
Conversation!
Shall we stop now for some conversation? {Q&A}
i
For more on color harmony, see John Gage, Colour and Meaning, especially pp. 162-63
ii
M.E. Chevreul, The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors & their Applications to the Arts (1839; 1st English
edition 1854; revised & edited by Faber Birren, 1987).
iii
See transl. By Matthaei….
iv
M.C. Richards, Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America (Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1980).
v
From the Mahatmas in north India, ‘M’ and ‘K.H.’, transcribed, compiled & with an Introduction by A.T. Barker (London:
T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., May 1924, 2nd impression), pp. 30-31.
vi
Arthur Zajonc, p.____

SLIDES:

John Everet Millais: “The Blind Girl” (1856)

Goethe: [a] 1st chart 1810 in Farbenlehre with blue-color-blind painting at bottom
[b] Light and dark edges producing spectra
Arthur Segal: Fisherman’s House I (1926) influence of Goethe showing polar
Interaction of light & dark

M.E. Chevreul: [a] Conversation aged 100 with photographer ‘Nadar’

[b] color wheel, bottom (1864) & wheel of painter Louis Hayet, top
(1885)

J.M.W. Turner: [a] “Sunrise with Sea Monster” (1840-45) after Chevreul’s book
[b] “Light & Colour: Goethe’s Theory” (c1843)
[c] “Rain, Steam & Speed—the Great American Railway” (1844)

Seurat: [a] “Moored Boats & Trees” (1890)

[b] “Circus” (1891)

Robert Delaunay: tk

Pissarro: tk

Paul Serusier: “Bois d’Amour”: The Talisman (1888)

Vincent van Gogh: tk night cabaret (1888)

Monet: [a] “Impression: Sunrise” (1872) -- from this painting Impressionism was named
[b] “Haystack” series: Winter (1871)
[c] “Japanese Bridge” (1918-22)
[d] “Waterlilies” series: Irises (1916-23)

Frantizek Kupka: “Rings of Newton” series (1912)

Kandinsky: “Improvisation 26” (1912)

Malevich: “Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918)

Balla: “Street Lamp—Study of Light” (1909)

Severini: “Spherical Expansion of Light: Centrifugal” [detail] (1914)

Matisse: [a] “Fall of Icarus” (1943) – ‘black light’

[b] “Large Red Interior” (1948)
Ad Reinhardt: tk – black on black

Mark Rothko: “White Center” (1950)

Jackson Pollock: “Lavender Mist” detail (1950)

Yves Klein: Painting with Fire (1961)

Barnett Newman: “Who’s Afraid of Red/Yellow/Blue?” III (1966-67)

Paul Klee: tk fire at evening (1929); blue-orange harmony (1923); blossoming (1934)

Joseph Albers: [a] “Variant” (1947-52)

[b] “Four Reds around Blue” (1948)
[c] “Homage to the Square” series: Fall Finals (1963)

Richard Anuzkiewicz: tk entrance to green (1970) – student of Albers

Beth Ames Swartz: Chakra installation, Calgary and various other venues.
[a] “A Moving Point of Balance” (1985)
[b] the Chakras
[c] detail: No. #3 chakra painting (1984)
[A book on her art, Reminders of Invisible Light (2002) is available from
Hudson Hills Press; she lives in Paradise Valley, AZ]

Beverly Brodsky: [a] “River” (1999)

[b] “Venice” (1998)
[c] “Green” (2004)

Makoto Fujimura: Nihonga technique: mineral pigment, glue & gold (c2001). The
revival of an ancient Japanese technique. Crystals of ground pigment refract
and reflect ambient Light. Similar effect as ground glass used in paint
by Renaissance Venetian painters.

Thomas Wilfred: [a] Lumia: “Firebird” (1934)

[b] 1st table model Clavilux “Luminar, #50” (1928)

Dan Flavin: Corner Light installation with neon tube: “For the Sonnabends” (1970)

James Turrell [a] Perceptual cell series, creating a ganzfeld

[b] “Big Red” (2002)
[c] from Cross Corner Projection series (1967-74)
[d] from Divisible Space series: “Yellow on Two Reds, Reathro II”
(1970-2002)
[e] “Gard Blue” (2002)
[f] “Meeting” (at PS 1, Long Island City, NY): Night sky (1980-86)
[g] “Reflected Sky Space” (2000)
[h] Roden Crater, Flagstaff, AZ, exterior
[I] Roden Crater, sky seen from viewing room inside

Refracted Light: projection through PrismReflected Light: Winter Sunrise over Burt’s Pond in NE PA

Endlessmountainsbooks@yahoo.com