Event date: Thursday 23 April 2026
Link expires: Wednesday 30 September 2026

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Join Hilary Hope Guise for an exciting series of three talks on the depiction of light, space and time in art.

Lecture One: Light in Art.

In the Dark Ages, Europe was covered in thick forests and fears abounded. Not surprisingly, light took on a theological or philosophical meaning. As the Medieval age of Faith waned, shadows began to appear, confirming the physical source of light as being from the sun. In art, sacred figures cast shadows for the first time, leading to the extreme chiaroscuro of Caravaggio and reflecting the political upheavals of the late 16th century. In the 20th century, Nihilism plunged into the all-black canvasses of Ad Reinhardt, expressing a fear of light and human emotion. We emerged into the 21st century with huge light installations by Olafur Eliasson.

Lecture Two: Space in Art.

In early Celtic and Anglo-Saxon times, space was frightening, harbouring invisible demonic spiritual forces that caused a great fear of emptiness, as found in the book of Kells. This ‘Horror Vacui’ in which no space is allowed is evident in centuries of art.

In the 17th century, space is re-born in the airy landscapes of Claude Lorrain in step with the intellectual freedom in the Enlightenment. We return to the horror vacui in the late 19th century in Rodin’s Gates of Hell which announce a century of war. Today, the humbling reality and vastness of Space shows us ourselves, as seen from the other side of the moon.

Lecture Three: Time in Art.

We look at how the concept of framing time has been depicted in art. First, with symbolic images, like the hour-glass, or the nails in Van Gogh’s boots? Yet iconography must evolve as the industrial world speeds up. In the 19th century the Impressionists’ rapid and cheeky images convey the pace of city life as in Monet’s flag-waving Paris, and later his time-capture in colours around his corn stacks. Brushstrokes speed up and disappear, annihilating human gestures in the consumerist images of the 20th century. Finally, in the installations of Andy Goldsworthy, time in Nature herself, is the great destroyer.