Friday, January 15, 2010

The Darker Sides of Light & Color

The Darker Side of Light exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC will have it's final day on Monday the 18th.



The Dark Side of Color track of the Color Imaging XV: Displaying, Processing, Hardcopy, and Applications conference in San Jose will take place on Wednesday the 20th.

Next week will be a busy week for dark sides.

The Darker Side of Light features works of art:

"that reveal the romantic sensibilities of the arts of privacy. Here the experience of art was a private affair, like taking a book down from the shelf for quiet enjoyment. The arts of privacy encouraged the expression of darker thoughts and moody reflections—a milieu that recruited the talents of academics, realists, impressionists, and symbolists."

The Dark Side of Color will include a selection of provocative presentations on the color of globalization, color and size, and the uncontrolled viewing of color. The last presentation in the track is titled "The appearance of illusions in the delusion of reality" by John McCann.

The Darker Side of Light was reviewed in the LA Times and one specific piece was described in detail:

"By 1878, Félix Hilaire Buhot was depicting a master printer as the devil, the undulating distortions of his gnarled body merging with the wavy clouds of acid fumes rising from the process. The 19th century revival of etching, with its deliberate gradations of tone achieved through slow and careful effort, with acid washes biting into metal, seems an appropriately satanic method. But other printing techniques also came into effective play: In a startling 1888 lithograph, “It Is the Devil,” Odilon Redon creates a blackened soup from which the beast's bony face flickers into view."

The Dark Side of Color will presumably not include such dark representations of creative hardcopy but with any luck it will once again generate curiosity, discussion and debate.

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