Painter, photographer, designer and media theoretician György Kepes was an associate of László Moholy-Nagy for more than a decade. He established the first workshop at the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937, which focused exclusively on the study of light as an aesthetic medium. Dedicating his life’s work to the intersection between art and science, Kepes founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at MIT, one of the world’s leading technological universities, in 1967 with the aim of bringing interdisciplinary artists together with scientists and engineers to suggest ideas on environmental and social problems that pose a threat to our everyday life. Experiments were conducted here with lasers, holograms, video and other electronic imaging media. This centre was the first known place in the world where research into kinetic art could be carried out in an institutional setting. Kepes’ light sculpture Glowing Columns, constructed in 1973, was inspired by the aesthetic features of the new devices that accompanied the development of modern technology. It was exhibited for the first time at the Museum of Science in Boston at the artist’s retrospective exhibition. The tower-like structure, suspended into the space from above, was inspired by the mechanism of the heating filaments of a bread toaster, resembling tiny radiators. Kepes was fascinated by the sight of these wires, which first turned yellow, then orange and finally glowing red. According to the original concept, as the rods became hot, the backlighting would gradually fade, and as they cooled again and the warmth of the colours faded, the room lighting would intensify. The artist also considered the possibility of a virtual extension of the lighting environment: he doubled the spatial experience by placing a mirror under the six rows of chrome-nickel rods. This visual contrast was enhanced by the rock fragments Kepes originally placed on the surface of the mirror as a symbolic reference to the importance of the unity between the natural and the artificial environment.

Dedicating his life’s work to the interaction between art and science, György Kepes (Selyp/Lőrinci – 2001, Cambridge, Mass.) began his educational career in 1937 at the New Bauhaus in Chicago, where he was commissioned to teach a course on the use of light in art. In 1967 he established a centre at MIT, where he became the first person to conduct research on kinetic art in a programmatic way under the auspices of an educational institution.

Márton Orosz