Olafur Eliasson meets... Pieter de Hooch

There's a terrific Pieter de Hooch painting at the National Gallery of Art called The Bedroom. It's a classic 'keyhole' De Hooch, featuring an interior scene, an open door that pulls the eye through the room out onto a little patio, and then through a patio door out into what looks like a garden. Sure, it's a perspectival study, but it's also a study in how a skilled painter can portray different kinds of light in different ways and how he can use that skill to suck the viewer into the scene. When I look at The Bedroom I can almost feel my eyes walking through the changes in light.

Speaking of which: That's exactly how Olafur Eliasson's One-way colour tunnel at SFMOMA works. The piece is installed on Mario Botta's fifth-floor bridge. It transforms a chilly white space (one that gives fits to we mild acrophobics) into a kaleidoscopic pathway into the exhibition. Like a de Hooch, it pulls the viewer through the piece into new light and new colors. (And, in this case of SFMOMA's installation, the viewer ends up in Eliasson's 360-degree room for all colours.)

It is also worth paying attention to the title of the piece: 'One-way colour tunnel.' If a viewer walks one way across the bridge s/he gets the colorful view. In the opposite direction the piece is muted, even darkened. Quite often De Hoochs feature darkened interiors and to reach the promise of light you have to look through all those keyholes to from where the light is coming. Eliasson's One-way works this way too: If you walk across the bridge in the 'wrong' way, the bridge seems darker, as in this picture. If the viewer look through the darker bridge to what's on the other side, s/he looks through to a bright white wall in which is a small window -- just like a de Hooch come to life 21st-century-style.

Because Eliasson is nothing if not thorough, that window is even highlighted with another Eliasson, Sunset kaleidoscope. (Sorry, I can't find a pic that shows this. But you can kinda, sorta get a sense of it here. Sunset is behind the man's head.) I find myself thinking about the two pieces this way: Eliasson has smartly used the pretty colors and neat-o effects to suck in 95 percent of the audience... all the while knowing that just enough artfolk will enjoy the influence of a Dutch master.