131 Color Culture and Science Journal Vol. 14 (1) 

BOOK REVIEW: Light - the color of desire 
Renata Pompas 

Andrea dall'Asta: Light - the color of desire, 
Ancora Editrice, Milan, 2021. 

In this second book dedicated to light in art, Andrea 
Dall'Asta tackles modernity, after analysing its presence 
in antiquity in: "The light splendour of truth” (see: Color 
Culture and Science, nm. 10 - December 2018). 
The author, continuing the path of analysis and research 
on the tension towards light, asks himself whether in 
contemporary art light is symbolic, physical, or simply 
functional, and answers in seven chapters: seven 
interdisciplinary paths starting from Impressionism to 
monochromy, through the icon-works of some artists, 
including at the end of the book, also sacred architecture, 
photography and cinema. 

Chapter I - The Light of Impressionism: completion of 
a Western journey? 

The 19th century ends with Monet's color, who in the 
landscape in "Impression, sunrise" shows a 
phenomenological vision of light (1872); with Seurat's 
color, who in "A Sunday afternoon on the island of 
Grande-Jatte" shows a system of optical rules (1884); 
and with Cézanne's color, to whom the author dedicates 
intense pages, who in "Still life with peaches and pears" 
(1889) revolutionises the representation of light in the 
image, in fact: "from within the thing comes a light, as if it 
were its splendour, its éclat". 

Chapter II - The twentieth century: the dissolution of 
the 'realm' of representation 

In the new century, philosophy rethinks itself, aesthetics 
and the function of art, which the author compares. 

Chapter III - The modern icon and the spiritual power 
of color 

The 20th century opened with the renewal of oriental 
spirituality of Byzantine origin, led by two Russians: 
Kazimir Malevich and Wassilji Kandinsky, the former with 
his radical rejection of all representativeness that in the 
painting "Black Square on a White Background" (1915) 
partially hides the light of the cosmic white background 
with the black of alchemic lead and the latter, as a true 
synesthete, creating the structure of a metaphysics of 
colors, based on the construction of a sound symphony: 
a music of the celestial spheres. 

Chapter IV - A journey into the beyond. Beyond the 
perception 

After the Second World War, research into color and light 
in art achieved results on the borderline between 
aesthetics and mysticism. 
Yves Klein's radiant colors, reach the limits of visibility 
through luminous blue; Mark Rothko's colors "create the 
sensation of an evanescent movement of matter" in 
which color becomes light, atmosphere, even in the very 
dark tones of the Rothko Chapel, where they "shine a 
kind of black light". 
The American Barnett Newman vertically crosses his 
monochromes with zips as rhythm, separation, wound. 

Chapter V - Light is the material of the work! 

There are beautiful the pages dedicated to Lucio Fontana 
and his relationship between light/space/time and to the 
spirituality inherent in his works, where the holes and cuts 
show a further space that "is neither physical nor 



132 Color Culture and Science Journal Vol. 14 (1) 

perspective, but cosmic, infinite, illuminated by the light 
that enters and spreads", or to the installations with neon 
light or Wood's light, where the spectator loses his 
bearings and feels disoriented. 
He describes Nanda Vigo's immateriality of the play of 
reflections and light; of James Turrell and Irwin's 
Ganzfeld, the a-directional immersive spaces that seem 
to be a journey through a giant three-dimensional 
monochrome; of Dan Flavin's the environments 
enveloped in the intensity of light-color energy. Then he 
describes contemporary research on monochrome: the 
changing colors of David Simpson's canvases, the RGB 
LED projections of Pietro Mega's "Blue Church", the 
constant and elusive flow of light in Shay Frisch's 
modular elements, the meditation on light in Ettore 
Frani's works. 

Chapter VI - Light in sacred architecture 

In contemporary sacred architecture it is emptiness that 
dictates the spatial and functional relationships, and 
light is a protagonist: now purely functional, now 
symbolic. Dall'Asta looks for the most spiritual 
expressions, from the beginning of the 20th century to 
the present day. 
The beautiful pages devoted to the chapel in Vence 
(France) created by Henri Matisse (1949-1951), focus 
on the warm light of Provence that illuminates the 
chromatic symphony of the pure colours of the partly 
transparent and partly frosted stained glass windows. 
Are at the opposite the 104 aniconic stained-glass 
windows by Pierre Soulage in Conques (France, 1994) 
and the Gerard Richter's abstract stained-glass 
windows in Cologne (Germany, 2007). Tadao Ando's 
Church of Light in Ibakiri (Japan, 1989) pierces the deep 
darkness of the ascetic, bare chapel with a cross-
shaped slit in the solid concrete walls. Also are 
described the Friedrich F. Haindl's church in Munich 
(Germany, 2000), the Peter Zumthor's extraordinary 
chapel built like "a cave dug into the belly of the world" 
in Wachendorf (2001). Among the Italians, Mario Botta's 
churches and the mystical chapel of Villa Serena (2017) 
by Ettore Spalletti, drowned in the metaphysical silence 
of its blue hues. 

Chapter VII - Photography and cinema: the landing of 
a long journey? 

Since photography, as the term itself composed of phòs-
photòs (light) and graphé (writing) says, is "a writing of 
light", as is cinema, to which movement and time are 
added, Dall'Asta traces a brief history of the two arts, in 
which photography and cinema are seamlessly 
intertwined. 

ConclusionsVII 

An exciting, well-documented, original and unmissable 
book for all those who are passionate about art, light and 
colour.