Seeing the light | 22 February 2018

The impermanence of works of art is a worry for curators though not usually for artists, especially not at the start of their careers. But Anthony McCall was only in his mid-thirties when his creations vanished before his eyes.

It was in New York in the early 1970s that McCall came up with the idea of ‘solid light works’, animated projections of simple abstract shapes in which the beams of projected light assumed a physical presence. Not being taken seriously by commercial galleries — ‘It did occur to me that I hadn’t made a terribly wise career decision’ — McCall’s solid light works were initially shown in the sorts of dusty, smoky downtown lofts where devotees of ‘expanded cinema’ gathered. Then, just as they began to attract attention from public institutions, their solidity crumbled. In the dust- and smoke-free zones of the modern art gallery the sculptural beams of light became invisible: from dust they came, and without dust they went.

Fortunately the British-born artist had another string to his bow, having initially trained at Ravensbourne college in graphic design. From the early 1980s he reinvented himself as a designer of art books and catalogues, a career change so thorough that people thought there must be two Anthony McCalls, and he almost began to think so himself. Then the haze machine came along to solve the problem that had put a halt to his fine-art career, and by the time he returned to the art world in the early noughties it was ready for his work.