Art Explainer 3: Light and Shadow

How does an artist use light to help keep us out of the dark?

Tanner's Disciples:
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/...
Kollwitz's Battlefield: http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/...
Flavin's Monument:
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/...

Using three artworks from the Art Institute's collection, this video unpacks a central theme and uses innovative visual storytelling to highlight the choices artists made to create light and shadow in their works.

Art Explainer videos empower you to look at and understand art from any historical period or culture. Designed for students as well as adults, this video series is produced for the web and usable in a wide range of learning environments, from mobile devices to formal school classrooms.

Artwork credits:
Henry Ossawa Tanner
The Two Disciples at the Tomb, c. 1906
Robert A. Waller Fund, 1906.300

Käthe Kollwitz
The Carmagnole, 1901
Margaret Fisher Endowment, 1998.79
© 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Käthe Kollwitz
Battlefield, 1907
Gift of Mrs. Walter Paepcke, 1957.21
© 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Dan Flavin
Flavin at his exhibition at Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Munich, 1968
© Stephan Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Courtesy Devid Zwirner, New York/London

Dan Flavin
"monument" for V. Tatlin, 1964
Gift of Society for Contemporary Art; Twentieth-Century Purchase Fund, 1978.154
© 2018 Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Dan Flavin
Greens crossing greens (to Piet Mondrian who lacked green), 1966
© Stephan Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Courtesy Devid Zwirner, New York/London

Dan Flavin
Untitled (to Jan and Ron Greenberg), 1972-1973
© Stephan Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Courtesy Devid Zwirner, New York/London

Dan Flavin
Untitled (to Tracy, to celebrate the love of a lifetime), 1992
© Stephan Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Courtesy Devid Zwirner, New York/London

Dan Flavin
An artificial barrier of blue, red and blue fluorescent light (to Flavin Starbuck Judd), 1968
© Stephan Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Courtesy Devid Zwirner, New York/London

Dan Flavin
Untitled (fondly to Margo), 1986
© Stephan Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Courtesy Devid Zwirner, New York/London

Dan Flavin
alternate diagonals of Mach2,1964 (to Don Judd), 1971

Dan Flavin
(to Elite and her baby, Cintra), 1970