Line Describing a Cone

Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone represents a complex development paralleling the American light (and land) artist James Turrell’s geometric projection pieces via the filmic experiments of Expanded Cinema. A thin beam of light is projected onto a screen in a completely darkened room that has been painted black. Since the space has been filled with dense artificial fog, conical volumes form successively in the room, to hover between the projector and the projection spaces. This light body dominates the space so that the abstract projected filmic image and the screen recede entirely into the background. By moving through the light body and thus interrupting and modifying the projection, viewers become part of the work. The entire space is dominated by the geometric light, as well as the gradual waning and waxing of the conical form.

Unlike James Turrell and his observation space, Anthony McCall has designed an “embodied space,” a space that has become corporeal. Viewers are not isolated in compartments of their own, but are right in the midst of the work. Instead of a neutral white background, the black room is the absorbent space (of the cinema), which minimizes light reflections and generates a central black-and-white motif.