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The Blue Hour in Medieval Art

(Picture: Eusebius)

(29.6.2023) What is history about, what is a history of light about? A history of light is about knowing that projecting a light-show on the exterior side of Chartres Cathedral is one way of dealing with light and experiencing of light, but that, in the past, there have been other mentalities, other practices, and other ways to experience light, to think of light and to live with the light filtered through the windows of Chartres Cathedral. Which, of course, is a lieu de mémoire, as to the (theological) history of light. And I am distinguishing two ways in which history can, might enhance contemporary life: one that shows how the present time has become what it is (showing present time as a result, but also as something in motion and evolution, forward, but also in regression); and one that shows how other times have been different from our time, highlighting, potentially, what we are and what we are not.

1) Approaching Transcendence

In 2007 the German journalist Hanno Rauterberg described a visit of Roden Crater with James Turrell, the light artist who had developed the crater to become a sort of observatory or laboratory of experiences, in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit. At the beginning of the reportage we witness Turrell driving fast through the desert, so that the journalist and guest might not miss the hour of twilight at the crater. And indeed the reportage reached its climax with Rauterberg describing how he experienced a blue hour, or better: the color blue coming down from heaven, at Roden Crater, at dusk:

»Wir setzen uns auf die runde Bank in der runden Kammer und schauen noch ein wenig zum Dachauge hinaus. Das Abendblau ist jetzt ganz tief und klar und scheint immer tiefer und klarer zu werden. Man kann nicht davon lassen, sich in dieses Blau hineinzusehen, bis plötzlich etwas Seltsames geschieht. Das Blau springt herab, füllt mit einem Mal das Deckenauge, fast meint man, es sauge sich ein wenig hinein zu uns in die Kammer. Das Ferne rückt nah, der Himmel kehrt auf Erden ein. Und auch wenn das nur ein Bild ist, eine Täuschung – nur zu gerne mag man ihr glauben.« (Rauterberg 2007)

A few years later, in the same German newspaper Die Zeit, another journalist, Christoph Siemes, referred to Turrell’s art as »grösstmögliche Annäherung an die Transzendenz« (the closest possible approximation of transcendence) offered by contemporary art (Siemes 2010). This is implying that Turrell indeed wishes to approach a ›beyond of physical nature‹ (while in the reportage by Rauterberg Turrell rather fashions himself as someone interested in physics). But also in Rauterberg, in his reserve (expressed by the last sentence, about an image that one would like to believe in), expresses probably the feel that Turrell and that Roden Crater is not only about optical phenomena, but indeed about the search (or the hope, if not to say: the certainty) that there is something beyond physical nature, something sublime and worth to be revered (or at least to be mused on).

2) Liturgical Time and the Blue Hour

The official website of Chartres Cathedral describes, among other things, that people, local people at Chartres, or regular visitors of the cathedral, do live with the cathedral and its windows, having and displaying also a local knowledge (a knowledge that only people familiar with a site can have), as to the various times of the day and the various weather situations, which turn the experience of particular windows of Chartres Cathedral into very particular experiences – made inside Chartres Cathedral, while looking through the windows into the atmopshere of day and light outside. A cloudy day might offer other experiences, bright sunlight in the afternoon might enhance the famous yellow, and the interplay of subject matter, experience of space, and the visitor’s own musing might add to a particular and very personal experience.
We can posit, although we actually do know very little about the personal experiences of visitors, pilgrims, locals, inside Chartres Cathedral, we can posit that also the men and women in the 12th and 13th century had this local knowledge, and that the men and woman of the Middle Ages, experienced a blue hour at Chartres Cathedral, which is famous for its windows, and particularly the color blue of many of its stained glass windows.
And this would be the task of a historian, a historian of light: to reconstruct at least the frame of such personal experiences, which one would do by reconstructing the liturgy practiced at Chartres Cathedral at a particular time. Because men and woman of the Middle ages would have experienced light at Chartres in the institutional framework of their day: the beliefs as to light, the liturgical timetable, the music sounding at particular times of day and evening and at particular liturgical occasions.
And in the evening, when, as Suzanne Beeh-Lustenberger (1990) did write, the red light was receding, the blue was becoming intese, so intense that one may now think back to the reportage by Rauterberg, asking: what did men and women experience, then, and what are we or what would we experiencing now, at Roden Crater, or at Chartres Cathedral, and perhaps even during a light-show projected on Chartres Cathedral from outside.
Maybe, while attempting to answer the aforementioned questions of who we are and who we are not, we would learn something about ourselves (and maybe not). Perhaps we would learn something about seeking or approaching transcendence, the beyond of our physical world, and maybe not. And maybe we might, instead of turning to Chartres Cathedral, to the light art of James Turrell, with or without an interest in physics, and with or without an interest in theology.

(Picture: Jason Richards/ORNL)

3) Cherenkov Radiation as a Blue Hour

Perhaps it is significant for the early 21st century that, when describing a blue hour, we instinctively use metaphors that do not expressively refer to a metaphysical search, but rather do refer to the history of light, the the color blue, for which also Chartres serves as a sort of symbol, or for very particular and, to most people, rather unfamiliar natural phenomena, such as the Cherenkov radiation. It was the American writer Joan Didion, who, in 2011, used this phenomenon as an alternative for Chartres, when describing a New York blue hour:

»You pass a window, you walk to Central Park, you find yourself swimming in the color blue: the actual light is blue, and over the course of an hour or so this blue deepens, becomes more intense even as it darkens and fades, approximates finally the blue of the glass on a clear day at Chartres, or that of the Cerenkov radiation thrown off by the fuel rods in the pools of nuclear reactors.« (Didion 2011, p. 8)

In the early 20th century when the phenomenon of the Cherenkov radiation was first seen by scientists, they did not have an immediate explanation for it. Today we are told that ›electrons move through the water faster than the speed of light‹, but still the experience of immediately observing the blue glow resulting from elctrons moving through water is not shared by many, and although we know that this is about science, we might feel something that brings us closer to the men and woman of the Middle Ages, who might have experienced something in the institutional framework of their day, which certainly was oriented versus transcendence, when experiencing the blue hour, while we, in the institutional framwork of enlightened science have little experience with unexplained and mystical things. Which often, for whatever reason, are associated with the color blue, blue glow or a blue light.

Selected Literature:
Hanno Rauterberg, Wie der Mensch zum Künstler wurde, in: Die Zeit No. 51 (13.12.2007), p. 42
Christof Siemes, Erleuchtung in einer Stunde, in: Die Zeit No. 35 (26.8.2010), p. 53
Suzanne Beeh-Lustenberger, Beobachtungen zur Farbe Blau in der Glasmalerei, in: Hans Geehrke (ed.), Blau. Farbe der Ferne [exhibition catalogue Heidelberg 1990], Heidelberg 1990, pp. 131-139 [referring to Eva Frodl-Kraft, Die Glasmalerei. Entwicklung. Technik. Eigenart, Vienna/Munich 1970]
Joan Didion, Blue Nights, New York 2011