On this day in 1976, the Rockne Krebs Laser Sculpture installation at the St. Petersburg Municipal Pier was unveiled. The Tampa Tribune, November 6, 2013,Excerpt from Glenn Anderson’s remembrance in Rockne Krebs Photographs + Interpretations by Carol Harrison 1* Harrison, Carol. Rockne Krebs Photographs + Interpretations. 2013.
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A Rainbow Tree, 1970A Rainbow Tree has always caught my eye. I feel my uncle’s art and ideas come from an inner connection that never forgot.
“Rockne makes his art mostly with his heart,” says Sam Gilliam. "Some of his works are the most sentimental things. When Robert Rauschenberg saw the Rainbow Tree, he actually cried. He said, ‘That’s something I wish I had done.’ “ 3* It's hard to understand that everything we see on a daily basis IS a sculpted piece of art, and made of light. That's how I think my uncle saw things. The only difference is how we choose to view it, that's how the world changes. We are just witnessing the unfolding of truth in the reflection of a prism rainbow. Moon Archer, 1974, drawing for a night rainbowAs in A Rainbow Tree, Moon Archer also uses the knowledge of the sculptor, Rockne Krebs, that the observer will not find on the outside what they don't hold on the inside. - Kyle Krebs ARTFORUM 1971 (ad text) - Krebs’ Spectral Drawings Signed edition of 50 A Rainbow Tree Hand tinted print 17”x22” A Film by Edward Kelley on Krebs’ Photon Structures (16mm; prints available) Jefferson Place Gallery, Washington, DC 1* Nathanson, Carol A. (Editor). Tracing Vision: Modern Drawings from the Georgia Museum of Art. Rockne Krebs, essay by Hillary Brown. 2011.
2* Forgey, Benjamin. The Washington Post, Krebs, Crystal Clear, At the Corcoran: Brilliant Light, Brilliant Ideas, December 24, 1983. 3* Allen, Jane Addams. The Washington Times, Rockne Krebs, December, 23, 1983. From the Archive: “The city at night is light” Krebs says, 1973.“Sky Bridge Green is not the first enormous outdoor work of art that has been installed in Philadelphia by a Washington artist. As they leave the Philadelphia Museum, those laser beams pass over Franklin’s Footpath, a painting of multi-colored stripes by Washington’s Gene Davis that is 414 feet long and eight lanes of traffic wide. Franklin’s Footpath, which has been painted on the street at the foot of the museum’s hill was also commissioned by David Katzive.” Richard, Paul. The Washington Post, 1973, The City at Night Is Light. Visiting Gene Davis' Franklin's Footpath, 1972. |
Krebs originally called the piece Sky Pi, he re-titled it Sky Bridge Green, perhaps after he and David Katzive met this man admiring the laser sculpture. “An elderly man, a stranger, was standing there at City Hall gazing in astonishment at the lights that came from the museum. When Krebs and Katzive then returned to the museum, they met the man again, staring at the light above him, climbing the museum steps. 'It’s like walking into heaven,' said the stranger.” Richard, Paul. The Washington Post, 1973, The City at Night Is Light. Sky Bridge Green was a bridge to the sky hovering above Davis' Franklin’s Footpath. |
Rockne Krebs’ lasers pierce the Philadelphia air
“Important among the sources of Rockne Krebs’s art are acknowledged early debts to Caro (openness and concern with actual space) and Noland (rigorous intellectual control of formal elements)….but just how far and how independently he has pushed them can be seen in the outdoor laser piece commissioned last spring by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
When read from below strictly from the point of view of style, the piece was like an excessively simple sculpture somehow suspended in the sky.
Yet it was impossible to read the piece merely as a formalist tour de
force. The piece emphasized with great tact and intelligence the street pattern of the city, in this case the broad, arrow-straight line of Franklin Boulevard that leads directly from City Hall to the knoll on top of which sits the museum temple. It interacted strikingly with other man-made aspects of its environment: fountains, equestrian statues, office buildings, street lights…These relationships changed radically as one changed one’s vantage point, and in view of the enormous territory covered by the piece, these possibilities were immense…” Forgey, Benjamin. Art in America, September-October 1973, Rockne Krebs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
When read from below strictly from the point of view of style, the piece was like an excessively simple sculpture somehow suspended in the sky.
Yet it was impossible to read the piece merely as a formalist tour de
force. The piece emphasized with great tact and intelligence the street pattern of the city, in this case the broad, arrow-straight line of Franklin Boulevard that leads directly from City Hall to the knoll on top of which sits the museum temple. It interacted strikingly with other man-made aspects of its environment: fountains, equestrian statues, office buildings, street lights…These relationships changed radically as one changed one’s vantage point, and in view of the enormous territory covered by the piece, these possibilities were immense…” Forgey, Benjamin. Art in America, September-October 1973, Rockne Krebs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
"Krebs, for all his precision, thinks about light like a mystic…"
“He is not the first Washington artist to work the same terrain. On their way from the museum hill to city hall those two brilliant laser beams zing high above the enormous, multi-colored section of Franklin Boulevard that Gene Davis covered with long stripes last summer…
How is it beautiful? How is it art? What is it, in fact, that Krebs has done? In the first place, unlike many of the unhappy couplings of art and technology… in the heady days of the mid-‘60s, Krebs’s laser environments represent a triumph of vision of over technique.
After all, the idea of making “sculpture” out of a non-material “substance” such as light is in itself an incisive bit of poetry, and when you get down to it, Krebs, for all his precision, thinks about light like a mystic…
On Franklin’s Footpath, Davis’ street painting, the trees enveloped me in almost total darkness. The laser beams seemed like everlasting comet trails – pure, inexplicable, beautiful.” Forgey, Benjamin. The Evening Star and The Washington Daily News, May 1973, A Spectacle of Light.
How is it beautiful? How is it art? What is it, in fact, that Krebs has done? In the first place, unlike many of the unhappy couplings of art and technology… in the heady days of the mid-‘60s, Krebs’s laser environments represent a triumph of vision of over technique.
After all, the idea of making “sculpture” out of a non-material “substance” such as light is in itself an incisive bit of poetry, and when you get down to it, Krebs, for all his precision, thinks about light like a mystic…
On Franklin’s Footpath, Davis’ street painting, the trees enveloped me in almost total darkness. The laser beams seemed like everlasting comet trails – pure, inexplicable, beautiful.” Forgey, Benjamin. The Evening Star and The Washington Daily News, May 1973, A Spectacle of Light.
”It is not just beautiful, it is important. For Krebs… has found a way of making monumental urban sculptures viable again. How sad it is to see the
aging statues sprinkled through cities. They once seemed large as life, or larger, but they seem so no longer…It is the city that has killed them…where the city pushes in the monuments seem lost. Our cities are too big, too busy, all sculpture seems too small. Krebs’ work, as you might guess, is huge...It succeeds because it is not made of steel, or of bronze or plastic. It is made of light….Though weightless and insubstantial, they manage to wholly dominate their visual competition." Richard, Paul. The Washington Post, 1973, The City at Night Is Light. *This article appeared in several other newspapers around the country and abroad.
aging statues sprinkled through cities. They once seemed large as life, or larger, but they seem so no longer…It is the city that has killed them…where the city pushes in the monuments seem lost. Our cities are too big, too busy, all sculpture seems too small. Krebs’ work, as you might guess, is huge...It succeeds because it is not made of steel, or of bronze or plastic. It is made of light….Though weightless and insubstantial, they manage to wholly dominate their visual competition." Richard, Paul. The Washington Post, 1973, The City at Night Is Light. *This article appeared in several other newspapers around the country and abroad.
"His experience with outdoor pieces is already extensive…I think by now he can claim to be the master of an exhilarating, unprecedented type of “city sculpture.” Forgey, Benjamin. Art in America, September-October 1973, Rockne Krebs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
“I found myself thinking of an evening in 1973, in balmier weather, when I walked from my apartment a few blocks from the Art Museum to see another temporary installation there, Sky Bridge Green by Rockne Krebs.
It consisted of a green laser beam shot from the Art Museum to a mirror atop City Hall and bounced several times across the Parkway. The atmosphere was like a party. People kept throwing objects to see if they could make this monumental beam of light disappear for a split second.
It was so much fun seeing the amazing light and the community it created,
I went back for several more evenings to see it again and again.
The Krebs piece dramatized the polarities of the Parkway — with one end in the heart of the city with its commerce and politics, the other at the Art Museum, representing aesthetic contemplation and the gateway to a natural world beyond. On the ground, the Parkway often falls short, but Krebs’ work shined a new kind of light on the ideals that brought it into being.”
- Hine, Thomas. The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 24, 2019.
- HK
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Rockne Krebs b:1938 - d: 2011 was a contemporary American artist. A pioneering artist, Krebs was recognized for his monumental sculptural work with laser light · RockneKrebsArt.com
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Rockne Krebs b:1938 - d: 2011 was a contemporary American artist. A pioneering artist, Krebs was recognized for his monumental sculptural work with laser light · RockneKrebsArt.com
The Plexi Pieces - Krebs’ Glistening Geometrical Sculptures - Original photographs from the 1960s
2/9/2014
1962-1965 United States Navy
1965 Trip to Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont to visit
Anthony Caro and Kenneth Noland.
Began plexiglass pieces.
1967 First experimentations with lasers, ideas for projection of color transparencies into a controlled atmosphere of vapor.
1965 Trip to Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont to visit
Anthony Caro and Kenneth Noland.
Began plexiglass pieces.
1967 First experimentations with lasers, ideas for projection of color transparencies into a controlled atmosphere of vapor.
"Krebs responded deeply to the work of sculptor Anthony Caro and visited Caro at Bennington College in Vermont where he, as well as Kenneth Noland, was teaching. While Krebs’s exposure to art is extremely broad, the work of Noland and Caro has been the most immediately influential. The most remarkable aspect of Krebs’ s study of the work of Noland and Caro is the speed with which he was able to grasp the problems they were presenting in their art and then the speed with which he was able to apply this toward solutions all his own. |
From these first triangular plexiglass works to the complex forms in clear plexiglass with pigmented resin in their seams…the reduction of the material requirements of sculpture and the resulting demands on the viewer’s perception have been continuous. While the pristine forms and handsomely crafted materials in these sculptures are an undeniable part of their appeal, their strength lies primarily in their creation of ambiguity….The ambiguity in Krebs’ plexiglass pieces centers on their opposing qualities of concreteness and transparency….Later the edges of the plexiglass forms were beveled to create a greater end surface and pigment was added to the resin used to join the separate sections. The result...was a glowing configuration of colored light supported by transparent planes."
Woods, James N. Rockne Krebs, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1971.
Woods, James N. Rockne Krebs, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1971.
“His materials vary but his concerns remain the same. All his sculptures deal with space-space explored and occupied by glowing lines of light. Krebs’ laser lines vanish at the throwing of a switch. His plastic lines are permanent |
“The sculpture seems to change as the viewer moves around it. Seen from the outside, the diagonal edges of the parallel walls overlap in the field of vision, forming a glistening X that shifts proportion as the viewer moves his head….all the while, the shadows and reflections cast by Clear (5’ wide x 12’ high) are responding precisely to the clouds and people moving around it and to the movement of the sun…displayed outdoors for HemisFair ’68, the world’s fair in San Antonio, TX. More than seven million people are expected to look at – as well as through – a Krebs sculpture of transparent Plexiglass...”
Richard, Paul. HemisFair Sculpture, The Washington Post, 1968.
Richard, Paul. HemisFair Sculpture, The Washington Post, 1968.
“Actual space is the medium of sculpture. I want to grasp the peculiarities of this medium and to force perception of the sculptural space to a conscious level….A transparent object occupies space, yet it can absent itself from the milieu. When this occurs, the viewer is compelled to locate it and define for himself the space it occupies. Perception of the space becomes a conscious act. The sculptures exist without an image and maintain a curious detachment from the surrounding space, even while their transparency continually confronts the viewer with his environment. The six planes that form the urban interiors through which our bodies move become their armature. “ Rockne Krebs, December 1967
Artists on Their Art, Art International, Volume XII/4, 1968.
Artists on Their Art, Art International, Volume XII/4, 1968.
- HK
“Rockne Krebs began experimenting with lasers in 1967. Also in
1967: Martin Luther King, Jr. denounced the Vietnam War. NASA announced the crew for Apollo 7. The US Supreme Court declared laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional. The Beatles released "Magical Mystery Tour." Physicist John A. Wheeler coined the term "Black Hole." A lost city was discovered in Greece. And yes... Rockne Krebs conducted early experiments with brand new laser technology; these experiments would lead to the first exhibition of 3D laser art.”
1967: Martin Luther King, Jr. denounced the Vietnam War. NASA announced the crew for Apollo 7. The US Supreme Court declared laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional. The Beatles released "Magical Mystery Tour." Physicist John A. Wheeler coined the term "Black Hole." A lost city was discovered in Greece. And yes... Rockne Krebs conducted early experiments with brand new laser technology; these experiments would lead to the first exhibition of 3D laser art.”
"Rockne Krebs: Drawings for Sculpture You Can Walk Through is open for 4 more weeks. This is the kind of exhibition that rewards intimacy. Take time with it, read Krebs' notes which are visible on the drawings, enjoy the video documenting the work as it lived in the moment of its creation."
“One of the many delights of exploring Rockne Krebs: Drawings for Sculpture You Can Walk Through is stopping to read the artist's notes on his drawings.
On the drawing below, he writes: ‘Cut a cloud and checker the earth.
Cloud windows. The sun is not a laser.’”
“One of the many delights of exploring Rockne Krebs: Drawings for Sculpture You Can Walk Through is stopping to read the artist's notes on his drawings.
On the drawing below, he writes: ‘Cut a cloud and checker the earth.
Cloud windows. The sun is not a laser.’”
From the Archive: RockneKrebsArt.com requests your help identifying the gentleman seated in the middle. This photo may be by Joe Cameron, and was taken in 1968 at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, DC, during a panel discussion. To the left is Walter Hopps, on the right is Rockne Krebs, and hanging on the wall is a very big Gene Davis painting!
- HK
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