Anthony McCall: ‘Solid Light’
Artists spent centuries making art about light – the divine rays of the Renaissance, the shimmering seascapes of Turner, the foggy hazes of the Impressionists – but it wasn’t until the 1970s that anyone really thought to make art with light. British artist Anthony McCall was one of the first, creating pioneering films that used projectors to trace shapes in the air, somehow seeming to turn nothingness solid.
It was a trick that the world wasn’t ready for. His immersive, smoke-filled environments, shown in New York lofts, were met with relative indifference, so he left art behind for decades. But the world caught up, and a ubiquitous trend for immersive art in recent years has seen his work reappraised. Now he’s at Tate Modern, taking over the galleries that until recently were home to the blockbuster Yayoi Kusama ‘Infinity Mirror Rooms’.
It’s a tough immersive act to follow. Kusama’s work is big, glitzy, selfie-friendly, but McCall’s isn’t. And in the wider context of London and its epidemic of heinous Klimt and Dali light shows, or even the good stuff like you see at places like 180 The Strand, can McCall’s simple, geometric films keep pace?
It feels physical, like the light is hitting you slap bang in the face.
After a room of sketches and an early film showing men in white overalls lighting fires at dusk, you’re plunged into darkness. The four light works here are quiet, ultra-meditative things, nothing more than shafts of white in a pitch black room. In the earliest...
