»In which art lights up our life

Seeing an article on Richard Box's Light Field brought to mind Walter de Maria's Lightning Field, a beautifully-conserved large-scale outdoor work. Conserving and curating environmental art is not a new challenge, as surely the Greeks has to protect the Parthenon and the Babylonians the Hanging Garden. Our attitudes towards art may have changed fundamentally, however, and we no longer separate it into the religious and civic spheres, but also into a realm removed from any function other than art. That is: art qua art. Care-taking of the Parthenon, a monument devoted to the goddess of wisdom, formed part of a religious duty.

Richard Box, artist-in-residence at Bristol University's Physics Department, employs the fluorescent bulb as an artistic element. I recently saw this in the work of Dan Flavin at the dia:Beacon galleries.