Holograms Are Dead. Holograms Live!

John Baldessari, It's Alive, 1997-1998. Getty Museum

Thirty years after the invention of photography, Julia Margaret Cameron and Carleton Watkins were mid-career masters. It is now 77 years after the invention of holography, and it is still difficult to name a serious artist whose reputation is based on holography alone. 

Are holograms art? Are they photography, even? Ever since physicist Dennis Gabor invented the medium in 1947, its aesthetic promoters have wrestled with questions that are not necessarily pertinent. It was once claimed that holography would supplant every other medium of visual expression. Nope! 

Any medium can be art, if artists choose to make it so. Bruce Nauman was the transformational figure here. He did holograms in 1968, leaning in to the medium's unserious reputation (compare Nauman's use of neon).

New York had a Museum of Holography from 1976 to 1992, when it closed for lack of funding in the global epicenter of art=$$$. Today the largest institutional collection of holograms resides 200 miles to the northeast, at the MIT Museum. Its 2000-some holograms, many acquired from the New York museum, skew towards scientific, commercial, and pop culture applications. 

Thus far there has not been an art museum to champion holography as serious art, the way MoMA and the Getty did with photography. That may be changing. The Getty has about 107 holograms, most by significant contemporary artists. A selection is on view in "Sculpting with Light: Contemporary Artists and Holography," a PST/LA show that runs through Nov. 24, 2024.

Louise Bourgeois, untitled, 1998, reissued 2014. Getty Museum

The C-Project was created to jump-start artistic use of holography. (That's C as in E=mc2, meaning the speed of light.) In the early 1990s, Guy and Nora Barron provided funds to commission artists such as John Baldessari, Larry Bell, Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, and Ed Ruscha to create holograms. Their efforts were exhibited and discussed at the time, but somehow the spark didn't blaze. The medium became known for its application on credit cards and wrapping paper.

In 2019 a group of C-Project glass holograms and the initiative's archives were donated to the Getty.

Deanna Lawson, Black Gold ("Earth turns to gold, in the hands of the wise," Rumi), 2021. Getty Museum

Like Nauman, Deanna Lawson came to holography on her own. The Getty show includes her Torus, Boombox, and Black Gold, the latter a hybrid of an inkjet photographic print with a hologram. All subvert the expectations of the medium and suggest its unrealized potential.

Bridging the exhibition's disparate elements are works by Matthew Schreiber, a holographic artist who provided tech support to both Lawson and the C-Project artists. 

Ed Ruscha, The End #4, 1998, reissued 2016. Getty Museum