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30/9/2000

Light

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Art, Technology and society in the Industrial age 1750 - 1900

Since Antiquity, light has bathed every corner of the human imagination. Light symbolised the divine fire, the creative spirit, the fertility of the earth, the masculine principle of heat, and the victory over darkness. In the Renaissance the light of learning shone from the Academies, and came to represent divine intelligence; it was the language of the angels, the vehicle of inspiration, witness to the divine nature of Man.

After the dramatic political upheavals of the 17th century, light became secularised. Mechanised by Cartesian mathematics and dissected by Newton's optics, light became the subject of a muscular and nascent science, committed to wresting Nature's secrets from her by force. By the early 18th century, artists, scientists, philosophers and industrialists were united by a common obsession with light - an obsession that was to bear fruit in every field of human activity. The first experiments with gas lighting were conducted in the 1730s, the first electric light shone tentatively and experimentally in the 1750s.

The ascendance of light was proclaimed on the frontispiece of Diderot's great Encyclopédie in 1751, a year before the invention of the lightning rod, powerful symbol of mankind's mastering of the forces of nature. The rendering of artificial light, and experimental science in general, came to captivate such artists as Joseph Wright of Derby and his circle.

This obsession with light fuelled researches in industry as well. In 1764 the Academy of Sciences in Paris announced a competition on the best way to light a big city. Street lighting was taken away from private property and administered by municipal authorities.

It was no longer enough to show the way home - the path itself was to be illuminated and made safe from highwaymen and other hazards. In 1765, a coal mine manager in Whitehaven lit his office with gas and offered to light the streets of the entire town. But such light sources were still fickle. Engineers and inventors tried to tame the faltering and feeble light - and succeeded with the Argand lamp of 1784. By the latter half of the century, the interest in light nourished a rich foliage of images and an iconography using light to champion progress, education, enlightenment. Artists had always been slaves to light.

Now studies of different daylight situations, minutely recorded, developed into autonomous works of art and collectors' items. Daylight classes were introduced at art academies. Light remained a main concern of Romantic artists, who saw it as the embodiment of spiritual qualities. Sacred or profane, light was art. Lighting changes were not immune to changes in taste: the gaslight vogue was already satirised as early as 1807. Gaslight had been introduced in some cities by the early 1800s, and on a grand scale in most big urban centres beginning in the 1820s.

Street lighting became emblematic of urban modernity. All kinds of merchandise was put 'on stage' under artificial light - from hats and feather boas in brightly lit shop vitrines to newly packaged and powdered 'ladies of the night'. New lighting conditions changed the presentation of objects of art in the museum, and the gaslight invaded the temples of culture. As artificial light transformed the perception of natural daylight, painting competed with ever more sophisticated light-based popular forms of entertainment - the diorama, stereo-photography, fireworks, projections.

Confusion reigned among artists as to the lighting environment of their works - how would their paintings be seen? The Salon and the exhibitions of the Impressionists were open until late at night, and viewing conditions changed dramatically - perhaps the artists should paint for artificial light after all? In 1888 Vincent Van Gogh had a gas-pipeline laid to the Yellow House at Arles. But gas was not to prevail. A harsh and unpleasant electric arc light was first introduced in 1861 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and 'Electrical exhibitions' followed soon afterwards, in the 1870s and 1880s.

By the early 1890s it was clear to all that despite its aggressive aspect and its ugly spectrum electric light would carry the day. The torch had been passed, and a new century was waiting for a new light source. Science and technology pushed ahead with innovation after innovation to tame the undesirable effects of electric light, but could artists keep up with such changes?

Manet was accused of not properly painting the white, blinding electric light of the Folies Bergères. But where Manet 'failed', others succeeded. By the end of the century, the obsession with light that had dominated and transformed life in Western Europe since the early 18th century rose to a fever pitch as the century closed with a hymn to light - the Palais de Lumière at the Universal Exposition of 1900, a celebration of one hundred years of technological progress in thousands of electric lights.

Curators

Andreas Blühm is Head of Exhibitions & Display at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. He has curated numerous shows of 19th and 20th-century art, most recently 'The Colour of Sculpture 1840-1910', and has published and lectured on the history of art from the Renaissance to today and photography.

James Bradburne is director of the Museum für KunstHandwerk in Frankfurt am Main. He has had creative responsibility for numerous award-winning exhibitions, including 'The Gates of Mystery', 'Mine Games', and 'Merchants of Light: The Art and Science of Rudolphine Prague', for which he was senior curator. Mr. Bradburne is also the author of numerous publications and catalogues.

Louise Lippincott is Curator of Fine Arts at The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. She has published extensively on 18th and 19th-century art and has researched the use of artificial light in 19th-century painting.

General information
The Van Gogh Museum is located on the Museumplein in Amsterdam, between the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum. The entrance to the Van Gogh Museum is at Paulus Potterstraat, number 7 The museum can be reached with trams 2 and 5 from Central Station. The museum is easily accessible for the disabled. All floors can be reached by lift; wheelchairs and buggies are available free of charge.

Addresses and telephone numbers
P.O. Box 75366, 1070 AJ Amsterdam
info: 020-570 52 52
tel: 020-570 52 00
fax: 020-673 50 53

Opening hours
museum: daily 10-18.00
ticket office: daily 10-17.30

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