Olafur Eliasson meets... Vija Celmins

Vija Celmins is fascinated by untouchable beauty in nature: starfields, ocean waves, spider webs. She is not, I hazard to say without looking at one of the umpteen Q&As with her that have been published in book form, all that interested in where the heck waves come from, in how they're made by what. Her drawings of photographs of ocean waves are solely concerned with the crests and valleys and rolling water. (The Celmins shown here is a detail from MoMA's Untitled (Ocean).)

As I've been discussing this week, the mix of art history and natural processes is right in Olafur Eliasson's wheelhouse. (A major Eliasson survey is on view at SFMOMA.) Of course, for centuries artists have painted the sea. The Dutch Golden Age masters emphasized both the sky and the Dutch merchant ships that brought the Netherlands great wealth. Courbet emphasized dramatic horizon lines and expressive brush-and-rag work in his representation of dramatic, foamy waves. When Eliasson made Notion motion I don't think he was interested in any of those kinds of things. Instead he went the Celmins route.

Vija Celmins' oceanscapes -- of nothing but waves -- are 'graphite-field' drawings that cover entire surfaces. The oceanscapes don't begin or end, they just fill. Eliasson's Notion motion does the same thing. In this piece Eliasson bounces the light from HMI spotlights off of a shallow pool of water and onto a projection-foil-backed nylon scrim. On the other side of the scrim a few wooden planks protrude from a wooden floor. When a viewer steps on the planks it creates disturbances in the pool of water, which result in small waves. Those wave patterns then cover the entire surface of the nylon scrim.

Celmins' and Eliasson's waves are both two-dimensional. Celmins uses familial perspectival tricks to impart texture, to allow us to 'see' the peaks and troughs of the waves. Eliasson isn't so interested in being so literal about reproducing a natural phenomenon. His waves are completely flat, nothing but curvy lines.

(The first four or five photographs here show the piece installed at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. Installed in 2005, the piece was substantially different.)

Related: In a catalogue essay, Mieke Bal also reaches into art history in an effort to contextualize Notion motion. Bal cites Friedrich, Claesz, and 19thC Dutch painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag, all of which I find unconvincing for the reasons I mentioned above.

Related: Olafur Eliasson meets... art history. Pieter de Hooch. Richard Serra.