Looking forward to presenting Michel Foucault’s Picture Object on Lighting the Artwork: Sensory Perception and Shifting Contexts of Displays at CAA 2026
Panel chairs: Marlen Schneider, Université Grenoble Alpes and Romain Thomas, Institut national d'histoire de l'art
From Peter Paul Ruben’s Ecstasy of St Gregory (1608), a masterpiece that has been rejected once placed in the Roman church Santa Maria in Vallicella due to its unsettling lighting effects in situ, up to Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project (2003) that unfolded its full sensual potential and artifice only when leaving the studio and being installed in its public setting – artworks often undergo dramatic perceptual shifts when presented outside their space of creation. Lighting effects add to the materiality of the artwork in a somewhat unstable and ephemeral way, either by being deliberately integrated in its creation and exhibition, or by unintentional modification of the surrounding light. This panel explores how lighting conditions affect the sensory and aesthetic reception of artworks. It invites contributions that examine light not as a motif, but as an external, contextual and performative agent — one that may dialogue with, enhance, or disrupt the artwork’s visual and material presence. We encourage proposals engaging with aesthetic reception theory (e.g., Kemp 1998; Wilder 2020), historical lighting technologies (Underhill 2017, 2018), or approaches from sensory studies. How did the evolution of lighting techniques impact artistic practice and display? In what ways did they interact with historical theories on the physical, artistic or even spiritual dimension of light, which also could determine the viewer’s expectations and appreciation of the object? Can knowledge of historical lighting conditions be reintegrated into today’s curatorial strategies?