Nancy Holt, Untitled (ca. 1973)
Grommets through foamcore in acetate box frame
19 3/4 × 15 7/8 ×1 1/4 in. (50.2 × 40.3 × 3.2 cm)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Untitled (ca. 1973)
Grommets through foamcore in acetate box frame
19 3/4 × 15 7/8 ×1 1/4 in. (50.2 × 40.3 × 3.2 cm)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Untitled [detail] (ca. 1973)
Grommets through foamcore in acetate box frame
19 3/4 × 15 7/8 ×1 1/4 in. (50.2 × 40.3 × 3.2 cm)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Untitled [detail] (ca. 1973)
Grommets through foamcore in acetate box frame
19 3/4 × 15 7/8 ×1 1/4 in. (50.2 × 40.3 × 3.2 cm)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Untitled [detail] (ca. 1973)
Grommets through foamcore in acetate box frame
19 3/4 × 15 7/8 ×1 1/4 in. (50.2 × 40.3 × 3.2 cm)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Untitled [detail] (ca. 1973)
Grommets through foamcore in acetate box frame
19 3/4 × 15 7/8 ×1 1/4 in. (50.2 × 40.3 × 3.2 cm)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Untitled [detail] (ca. 1973)
Grommets through foamcore in acetate box frame
19 3/4 × 15 7/8 ×1 1/4 in. (50.2 × 40.3 × 3.2 cm)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Untitled [detail] (ca. 1973)
Grommets through foamcore in acetate box frame
19 3/4 × 15 7/8 ×1 1/4 in. (50.2 × 40.3 × 3.2 cm)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Holt inserted twelve white grommets through a piece of white foamcore to create this circular composition in the mid-1970s. Each individual circular grommet is defined by ellipses of light and shadow. As with her room-sized installations Holes of Light (1973) and Mirrors of Light (1974) and her photographic series Light and Shadow Photo-Drawings (1978), this work explores the material qualities of light and shadow using the simplest of means. The circle was an essential form that Holt returned to throughout her artistic practice as a guide for understanding our place in the cosmos; as she writes in her concrete poem The World Through a Circle (ca. 1970): "the world focuses / And spins out again, seen."
1. Concrete vs. Ephemeral
Light, like sight, can be channeled, controlled so that shapes of light can materialize. In Holes of Light these shapes of contained light were outlined on the wall in pencil giving them even more of a physical presence, so that even when the light or sight is absent, a trace remains.
2. Light as the Concretization of Sight
It was once believed that sight emanated from the eyes and was cast out onto the world; that it somehow touched the things seen. Eye sockets were holes in the head for the emanation of light.
Nancy Holt
"Holes of Light," Originally published in Sightlines, ed. Alena Williams, 242-243 (University of California Press, 2011).
In this series, Holt shines a light through various curved cutouts and photographs the resulting shapes as they are projected on an opposing wall. In one of many investigations of light, Holt distills the photographic medium to its essence; by referring to the images as “drawings,” she examines the common principles of visual art as a whole. With no recognizable object of reference, the images invite the viewer to observe the interplay of light and shadow and grapple with the process of their own perception.
Holes of Light consists of a room bisected by a wall, which is perforated with eight circular holes arranged along a diagonal. Two lights are located on either side of the wall, and an alternating current switches between them so that one side of the room is dark and the other light. The projections of light are outlined on the walls so that the shapes are alluded to, even when they cannot be seen. The work generates a dynamic experience of the relationships between viewer and art object, practical and perceived, sensory and conceptual.
Holt inserted eight white grommets through a piece of white foamcore to create this diagonal composition in the mid-1970s.
Featured in the Bykert Gallery in New York in 1974, Mirrors of Light I consists of a spotlight directed at a diagonal row of mirrors; the resulting refractions form ellipses of varying size and proportion that are projected across the gallery walls. Holt was interested in using light as a medium, while simultaneously examining it as subject matter in its own right. In this single gallery setting, light is a conceptual entity and a physical reality, a practical resource and an aesthetic object.
Sun, moon, water, sky, earth, star; these are the words that shape the circular component of Holt’s concrete poem. The poem alludes to the cosmos as it is contained by the various frames and reflections of the earth below, from the human eye, to a pool of water, to the lens of a camera. Human perception of the cosmos and its earthly accomplices are the driving force behind the larger part of Holt’s oeuvre. In this early work, Holt manages to fit her most influential concepts within the confines of a circle.
