Anthony McCall
1946–
Since the early 1970s, Anthony McCall has taken a revolutionary approach toward experimental filmmaking through his ongoing series of projected light installations that are poised at the intersection of film, sculpture, drawing, and performance. His series Solid Light deconstructs the basic components of cinematic space— projection, light, darkness, duration— that require a phenomenological encounter with the work as opposed to the passive viewing of conventional narrative film. McCall completed his studies in graphic design at the Ravensbourne College of Art and Design in London in the mid-1960s and became an active member of the avant-garde artist collective the London Filmmakers Cooperative. He began using film to document his outdoor performance works and soon became fascinated with the medium itself, exploring its possibilities and limitations.
Made shortly after moving to New York in 1973, Line Describing a Cone is McCall’s first Solid Light film. When projected in a room filled with mist generated by a fog machine, the 16mm film creates a physical beam of light that slowly traces a circle until a single conical plane exits as a volume of light piercing the room. As viewers walk through the installation, their bodies interrupt the geometric volume of light. To McCall the film deals directly with projected light, “one of the irreducible, necessary conditions of film,” and “is the first film to exist solely in real, three- dimensional, space.” The film led to further explorations of projected forms such as ellipses, waves, planes, and lines that contract, expand, fade, and reappear.
Introduction
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 recognised in such exhibitions as "Into the Light: the Projected Image in American Art 1964–77,” Whitney Museum of American Art (2001–02); "The Expanded Screen: Actions and Installations of the Sixties and Seventies,” Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna (2003–04); "The Expanded Eye," Kunsthaus Zurich (2006); "Beyond Cinema: the Art of Projection,” Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2006–07); "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) and “Solid Light”, Tate Modern, London (2024-25).
Wikidata identifier
Q324807
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 25, 2025.
Country of birth
United Kingdom
Roles
Artist, cinematographer, designer, installation artist, photographer
ULAN identifier
500122534
Names
Anthony McCall, Anthony MacCall
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 25, 2025.
