LARRY BELL
Larry Bell (born 1939) is a leading American artist who developed new and unique ways of exploring the possibilities of light and its interaction with glass, inspired by the sun-bathed environment of California and New Mexico where he has lived and worked. Bell’s interest in glass results from its ability to transmit, reflect and absorb light at the same time. By altering the nature of these qualities he has found an infinite number of variations to work with. Bell’s significant hearing defect has been creatively productive in allowing him to develop a strong sense of sight and intense visuality that allows him to make art with a transparent medium like glass. From the 1960s when he arrived on the art scene Bell began to take great interest in science fiction, the race to the moon, and the fascination with physics and the new materials and technologies that developed from space exploration. As a result, his breakthrough work is grounded in the most cutting-edge formal concerns and techniques.
Bell used a film vacuum coating technique invented in the 60s that allowed a sheet of glass to be reflective on both sides. In this way, he participated in the move from hand- to machine-made practice in the 60s, emblematised by Warhol’s ‘factory’ production. But Bell soon led this process in the opposite direction by bringing the industrial apparatus back into the formally aesthetic space of the studio. His procedure consisted of ballasting vapour metal into a vacuum, where the absence of air allowed the metallic particles to free-associate in the thinnest of increments on the surfaces of pristine glass panels that were later assembled into cubes. The evanescent quality of these ultra-thin metallic surfaces, which are best described as ‘transparencies’, makes his sculptures appear to be weightless, hovering masses of atmosphere with subtle gradations of colour assembled in the symmetry of the cube. The vacuum has come to stand for the purity of Bell’s practice and abstract emptiness, which in the art world is also associated with the pristine exhibition space, or the ‘white cube’.
Bell’s innovative work in the mid-60s was at the centre of debates concerning the integration of colour and object and the Minimalist premise of flatness. Yet he achieved a technical and conceptual complexity that was not superseded by any artist during those experimental years. He allied the attention to surface articulation with a new focus on technical production and on the social and aesthetic conditions of seeing produced by new media: Bell’s small glass boxes relate to the television and its mesmerizing authority, which had a major impact on his generation. But instead of projecting images that communicated the jarring political and cultural events of the 50s and 60s as televisions did, Bell’s glass boxes emit a sense of peace and calm.
The technique of metal deposition is associated with the technical innovations of early photography. Bell has made significant experiments in photography himself, creating strange, distorted images that explore shadow and light, appearance and disappearance, and the passing presence of the figure (a concern that is also present in the cubes). Bell has also created ‘Vapour Drawings’ that resemble the process of silver salt deposition used in photography: they are made by placing paper in the vacuum rather than glass, and emphasise the importance of light and surface over weight and mass in his work. Aside from this Bell has created a number of ‘Mirage paintings’ using a collage technique which combines varying light-interacting materials that provide an unlimited source of captivating images.