12 C O N T E X TUA LIZING LIG HT
PERSPECTIVES ON LIGHT “Light in a space is easily understood when seen as the colloquial paint brush, revealing and hiding elements in a space for comfort, productivity, safety, and an appropriate ambiance. In that way, lighting can be appropriately referred to as the art of revealment and concealment.”
PERSPECTIVES ON LIGHT Louis Kahn “I gave myself an assignment: to draw a picture that demonstrates light. You say that the white piece of paper is the illustration; what else is there to do? But when I put a stroke of ink on the paper, I realized that the black was where the light was not, and then I could really make a drawing, because I could be discerning as to where the light was not, which was where I put the black. Then the picture became absolutely luminous.” Larry Kagan “The shadows are a condensation of something that exists in more dimensions ... behind them, there can be an awful lot going on. And what is more, because it was there all along to be seen and yet was not, we are left to wonder what else we may be missing.” Rudolf Wittkower “With Caravaggio, light isolates; it creates neither space nor atmosphere. Darkness in his pictures is something negative; darkness is where light is not, and it is for this reason that light strikes upon his figures and objects as upon solid, impenetrable forms, and does not dissolve them, as happens in the work of Titian, Tintoretto, and Rembrandt.” R. Buckminster Fuller “When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty … but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” Dan Flavin “Actual space of a room could be broken down and played with by planting illusions of real light (electric light) at crucial junctures in the room’s composition.”
