Art lovers do not commonly associate neon and other electric/electrifying art mediums with the Norton Simon Museum, whose more classic art forms are what the lovely Pasadena museum are well known to embrace.
However with Plugged In: Art and Electric Light, curated by Maggie Bell in conjunction with PST Art: Art & Science Collide, takes viewers on a new and enlightening journey.
Above, Laddie John Dill
The exhibition examines the use of electric light as an art medium in the mid-20th century. Eleven works of art are exhibited, featuring 8 different artists: Walter Askin, Laddie John Dill, Dan Flavin, Robert Irwin, Jess, Robert Rauschenberg, Allen Ruppersberg and Andy Warhol.
Each artist utilized electric light in their work. The star of the show is in the final of three connected, lower-level gallery spaces: an enormous work by Robert Rauschenberg, titled “Green Shirt.” Rising some 10 feet by 20 feet in length, multiple neon images, including an eponymous green shirt are illuminated. While based on the artist’s images, the work was created with Artkraft Strauss, which manufactured neon signage. It’s a lively, fun work, hissing with color and recognizable, figurative images such as a man’s tie, a woman riding a horse, two pigs.
Also on view: Dan Flavin’s prefabricated fluorescent lights to create somewhat sterile and mysterious installations utilizing what the curator notes as “factory floor lighting.” One such piece commemorates the historical figure and personal friend of his friend’s mother in law, a “Mrs. Reppin,” during World War II as an ersatz monument.
Jess, aka Burgess Collins, uses art with incandescent light bulbs and salvaged objects. The artist’s “Assembly Lamp Eight” combines glass langer with images of families, landscapes, and busy harbor scenes with decoupaged magazine clippings. This collage of visual images is lit with electric candle light to create a sort of light box of layered and not quite understandable images.
Andy Warhol’s controversial “White Painting” is another fascinating and not quite discernable piece, presenting a naked female torso that is activated through the use of ultraviolet light. Allen Ruppersberg’s large-scale “Location Piece” uses ambient lighting to bathe the viewer in an uneasy wash of illumination in a haunting space, while Robert Irwin’s “Untitled” combines sythemtic polymer paint on a metal disc and arm with a glowing light that’s half shadow-maker behind it.
Walter Askin’s “Polyplanographs” feature decals applied to layers of plexi. Per the late artist’s wife, artist Elise Anne Doyle, Askin wanted “the viewer to come closer and engage his “Polyplanographs” in order to discover forms and details which seemed to float in a dreamlike space – the light strongest at the bottom of the scene as if coming from stage lights to enhance a sense of mystery, play, surprise, expansiveness and discover the subtle fade to the top of light – and atmospheric float…the ethereal laying of forms floating and fading in color and shadow…” These are indeed intriguing works.
The exhibition is compact but well worth experiencing, given the unusual, even rare, use of electrically illuminated media by these artists.
Plugged In is illuminating the Norton Simon Museum until February 17, 2025. The museum is located atT411 W. Colorado Blvd. at Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena; admission is $20 for adults, $15 for senior, 18 and under admitted free. Admission is always free the first Friday of the month from 4-7 PM; the museum itself is open Thursday through Monday.
Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis
