Arts of Wonder: Enchanting Secularity—Walter De Maria, Diller + Scofidio, James Turrell, Andy Goldsworthy by Jeffrey L. Kosky

Author:Jeffrey L. Kosky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2013-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 22. Cynthia Hooper, Blue Volume of Light at a Window, oil on board (2011). Photograph: Cynthia Hooper.

FIGURE 23. Cynthia Hooper, Red Cube of Light, oil on board (2011). Photograph: Cynthia Hooper.

What are they made of? How did they come to be set here before me? What mechanism or force keeps them balanced in the air, hovering like clouds in seeming defiance of weight and gravity? I remember what Didi Huberman said of his own experience: “Let us say that it floats massively.”9 Massive floating: Can this really be? It must be either an illusion or a special effect produced by technologies that remain hidden but nevertheless secure for this mass its floating.

In order to ascertain what this is, you might try moving around to gain a better perspective or to see other aspects of the unknown thing. But changing perspective does not change what you see. There is no better position from which to see this thing, no position that would let you see it more correctly than you already do. What is more, there is no more information to be gained by seeing it from different angles, no more information to be added to what you already see in order to constitute an adequate mental image of the object. This thing has emerged suddenly and all at once. In its pure frontality, its seeming superficiality, it is like the Byzantine icon that you saw the day before at another museum in another city. The flatness hides nothing but confronts you face on, demanding that you stand observantly before it. A revelation of light, without prior light to illuminate it.

However much it is unchanging, with nothing hidden in reserve, it is hardly a solid and stable object. Solid and stable objects appear in the clarity of a light that illuminates, and illumination from such a light leaves traces on the surface of the object. The play of light and shadow, and its changing over time, give us information about the shape, the limits, and the position of objects in space. As the light rises or falls, advances or withdraws, or moves across the sky like the sun, the object appears differently and different aspects of it are revealed. The summing up or assembly of these aspects by the knowing mind constitutes the object we see clearly and distinctly. But this thing before you does not vary. Could it be that no light illuminates it, that it does not appear in the clarity of a light that illuminates? Yet there it is, fully revealed, totally present, before you. Obstinate. Unmoving.

Again I recall Didi Huberman, who suggests that when your eyes fail to grasp what they see, you try your hands. 10 But if, here, you reach out your hand and try to grasp the colored light, seeking some anchor in reality, some reassuring connection by way of which you might position yourself, you find there is no distinct edge or border, nothing solid—and yet something is there to see. Your hand searches in the light forever without finding a limit at which it can come to rest.

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