Neon and Fluorescent Light
Art made with glowing gas-filled tubes, from hand-bent neon lettering to standard fluorescent fixtures used as sculpture.
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About
Neon signs are glass tubes, heated and bent by hand, filled with gases that glow when charged; neon itself gives red-orange, while other gases and coated tubes supply further colours. Georges Claude demonstrated neon lighting in Paris in 1910, and by the 1920s it ruled shopfronts and city nights. Fluorescent tubes, sold commercially from the late 1930s, use a phosphor coating to give cooler, even light.
Artists brought both into the gallery in the 1960s. Dan Flavin's the diagonal of May 25, 1963, a single yellow fluorescent tube on a wall, opened decades of installations using off-the-shelf fittings. Bruce Nauman's spiral neon The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (1967) mimics a shop sign, and Joseph Kosuth used neon to spell out words about themselves. Tracey Emin later turned handwritten phrases into neon. Look at the colour of the glow and how light spills onto walls.
