light and illumination

In the first section of Arnheim’s chapter on “Light” he discusses the experience of light. This idea has always fascinated me and I appreciated when Arnheim wrote that

the luminosity of a house, a tree, or a book on the table does not
appear to the eye as a gift from a distant source. At most, the light
of the day or of a lamp will seem to call forth the brightness of
things, as a match ignites a pile of wood. Things are less bright
than the sun and the sky, but not different in principle. They are
weaker luminaries. (Arnheim 304)

The very attempt at conveying light in a work of art seems more possible with an understanding such as this. Now that we know objects can be luminaries we can imagine them as a light source rather than only a reflective surface. The paradox is that light can never be conveyed in a work of art to the degree it is experienced by our eyesight. Livingstone illustrates this effectively with juxtaposing her actual experience of seeing colored blocks to the picture of the same blocks in her book. She writes, “No matter how good the photographic paper I use, I cannot achieve an adequate range of luminances for all the colors simultaneously!”

Reading in Arnheim further he points out that the “brightness” of an object is determined by its “setting” and he quotes Leon Battista Alberti, who said that “thus all things are known by comparison.” (306) In works of art there is not a source of light only a depiction of it, this reminds me of the color theory course I did last year. Based on Joseph Albers approach we did exercises on color intensity. I learned that a very dark color can appear bright based on where it is located. For example in Alber’s book he gives a good visual of this with a gradation study of white to dark grey placed on a light grey background can give the illusion of the background where the dark matter is placed is lighter than the background where the white matter is placed although we realize the background is all the same color. (Albers 80)

When Arnheim introduces illumination the explanations get murky for me. This is what I believe Arnheim is getting at when he wrote about illumination. Arnheim said “illumination is the perceivable imposition of a light gradient upon the object brightness and object colors in the setting.” (Arnheim 310) While the object retains its inherent color it none the less will appear to be composed of various colors when illuminated. The Fauvist and then the Impressionist utilized this technique. Arnheim quotes Cezanne’s letter to the artist Emile Bonnard, “Light does not exist for the painter”. This seems to be a startling statement since so many painters before and after Cezanne’s time devoted their lives to conveying light in their works.

The last part of Arnheim’s section on light when he discusses the symbolism of light epitomizes why some artist divest their creative time in conveying light. The idea that light is an active player on the canvas is a powerful one. This makes me think of works by Kandinsky. In his Several Circles many of the spheres seem light and floaty, another, a dominant black sphere appears galactic and spatial, like matter compressed. Some of the spheres appear to be “light sources” while the black sphere seems one which a viewer could dive into and be surrounded by a sea of black space. The black sphere also makes the blue sphere appear brighter and the halo around it makes it a floating orb. The viewer then becomes a little unsettled because how can one jump into the black sphere if it is placed on top of the floating blue orb. Arnheim would probably agree that this is the uncanny effect of light utilized by an artist who knew very well what his objectives were.