Anthony McCall

Anthony McCall (born 1946) is a British-born New York based artist known for his ‘solid-light’ installations, a series that he began in 1973 with “Line Describing a Cone,” in which a volumetric form composed of projected light slowly evolves in three-dimensional space.

Occupying a space between cinema, sculpture, and drawing, his work’s historical importance has been recognized in such exhibitions as “Into the Light: the Projected Image in American Art 1964-77,” Whitney Museum of American Art (2001-2); “The Expanded Screen: Actions and Installations of the Sixties and Seventies,” Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna (2003-4); “The Expanded Eye,” Kunsthaus Zurich (2006); “Beyond Cinema: the Art of Projection,” Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2006-7); “The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Projected Image,” Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC (2008); and “On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century,” Museum of Modern Art (2010–11).

McCall studied graphic design and photography at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, Bromley, Kent, England from 1964-1968.

McCall was a key figure in the avant-garde London Film-makers Co-operative in the 1970s. His earliest films are documents of outdoor performances that were notable for their minimal use of the elements, most notably fire.^[1]

After moving to New York in 1973, McCall continued his fire performances and developed his 'solid light' film series, beginning with Line Describing a Cone, in 1973. Based on simple, animated line-drawings, these projections strikingly emphasize the sculptural qualities of a beam of light. In darkened, haze-filled rooms, the projections create an illusion of three-dimensional shapes, ellipses, waves and flat planes that gradually expand, contract or sweep through space. In these works, the artist sought to deconstruct cinema by reducing film to its principle components of time and light and removing the screen entirely as the prescribed surface for projection. The works also shift the relationship of the audience to film, as viewers become participants, their bodies intersecting and modifying the transitory forms.

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