b. Naestved, Denmark, 1889–1968
Study in Depth, Opus 152
1959
Projector, rotating reflector, colored glass, and rear projection screen
Reflector: 60 × 31 × 33 in. (152.4 × 78.7 × 83.8 cm); projector: 19 × 19 × 21 in. (48.3 × 48.3 × 53.3 cm); screen: 72 × 108 in. (182.9 × 274.3 cm)
Gift of Bristol-Myers Squibb by transfer from the National Museum of American History, Behring Center, 2004 (04.2)
Video courtesy Yale University Art Gallery
© Thomas Wilfred. Courtesy Clavilux.org. Photo: Lee Stalsworth
Thomas Wilfred (born Richard Løvstrøm) devoted his career to developing what he called lumia: artworks employing light as their primary medium. Similar to the motorized rotation and discs that Duchamp used to activate his Rotoreliefs, Wilfred’s Study in Depth, Opus 152 uses colored glass discs, polished aluminum reflectors, and a three-sided mirror to produce shifting, diaphanous forms. Commissioned by the Clairol company for its New York headquarters, the work was Wilfred’s first attempt working on a mural-like scale. Translucent green, white, fuchsia, and indigo forms curl like wisps of smoke, overlapping and circling around one another to suggest volumetric space. With its complex construction, Opus 152 can run for more than four months before a pattern repeats. In his lumia work, Wilfred said, he aimed “to produce in my viewers a feeling of the fundamental rhythmic flow of the universe—something beyond our little earth, our human problems.”
