#thomas wilfred

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Thomas Wilfred's Lumia machines

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“Untitled”, 1930s-40s, Osamu Shiihara, photogram

The Getty has gathered several innovative photo works made from the 1920s to the 1950s for Abstracted Light: Experimental Photography, part of their PST ART: Art & Science Collide series. The exhibition also includes several experimental films and a room dedicated to Thomas Wilfred’s  “Lumia Instruments” that produce colorful moving abstract forms.

From the museum-

Light abstraction emerged after the First World War as a preoccupation of photographers and filmmakers in international centers of art production. Many artists began seeing light as something that could be manipulated, then photographed and filmed, like any other physical material. This exhibition offers a selection of works, dating from the 1920s onward, that reveals these artists’ fascination with the formal qualities of light as well as their innovative methods of projecting, reflecting, and refracting its rays to liberate their media from traditional modes of representation. They emphasized the novelty of their varied approaches by inventing new terms-including “Rayograph” (Man Ray), “Light Drawing” (Barbara Morgan), “Luminogramm” (Otto Steinert), “Photogenics” (Lotte Jacobi), and “Lumia” (Thomas Wilfred) -to characterize their work. “More and more artists of our generation have begun to contemplate light with the eyes of a sculptor gazing upon a block of marble,” noted Wilfred, “seeing in light a new and basic medium of expression with unlimited possibilities.”

Below are a few selections.

Edward W. Quigley, “Untitled (Light Abstraction)” 1931-39, and “Vortex”, 1933, Gelatin silver prints

Nathan Lerner, “Car Light Study #7”, 1939, and Hy Hersh, “Untitled (Abstraction)”, About 1950, Chromogenic print

Man Ray, “Untitled (Sequins)”, 1930 and “Untitled (Corkscrew and Lampshade)”, 1927

Francis Bruguiére, “Untitled (Design in Abstract Forms of Light)”, About 1927

This exhibition closes 11/24/24.

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Still shots of music light images played on a Clavilux

Invented by Thomas Wilfred

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Thomas Wilfred, “Unit #86,” from the Clavilux Junior (First Home Clavilux Model) series (1930) (photo courtesy Yale University Art Gallery)

(via Hyperallergic)

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Lumia: Thomas Wilfred and the Art of Light, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven - March 2017 - all photos © Luciforma

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Thomas Wilfred

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Thomas Wilfred. Early Clavilux Jr, Nocturne Opus 148, Lumia Suite Opus 158, Vertical Sequence Opus 136, Lumia Opus 140. 1930-1956.

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Thomas Wilfred, “Vertical Sequence, Op. 136” (1940) (photo by Rebecca Vera-Martinez)

(via Hyperallergic)