Like a true Sun King

Olafur Eliasson is the Sun King of contemporary art. This status will be confirmed this summer when he will create the annual exhibition at the gigantic glittering palace of Versailles.This prestigious commission has become a significant milestone for artists of international acclaim, with Eliasson following notable predecessors like Anish Kapoor, Takashi Murakami, and Jeff Koons. Top-notch art as part surrounded by historical glitz, glamour and power.

But wait a minute, Olafur Eliasson, isn’t he the kind of alternative artist who promotes solar energy, writes vegan cookbooks and creates a protest artwork at the Paris climate summit? What’s he doing at Versailles?

Ironically, Eliasson’s career comes full circle with his Versailles exhibition. It began with his first major solar artwork in 2003 when he installed The Weather Project at London’s Tate Modern: an enormous, artificial sun 20 meters in diameter that quietly, with its orange-yellow glow, ominously dominated the atmosphere of the Turbine Hall — and against all expectations (Eliasson was still relatively unknown at the time) attracted millions of visitors.

This was mainly because the installation was so overwhelming: the light, the colour, the mist seeping through the space created such a seductive, glowing atmosphere that visitors by the hundreds lay down on the floor — enjoying, picnicking, kissing. But Eliasson also made no attempt to hide that his sun was an illusion. He deliberately left the construction, wires, lights, and mirror foil on the ceiling visible, as if offering you, the viewer, the choice to believe in this sun or reject it as fiction. Eliasson wasn’t creating a mere illusion, but rather a whole new ambiguous reality in which you could voluntarily participate or not.

Art that gives power to the spectator.

The same was true of his next solar work, which was of a very different nature. In 2012, Eliasson, together with engineer Frederik Ottesen, presented Little Sun, a portable, plastic LED lamp that runs on solar energy captured by the lamp itself (via a solar panel). The lamp barely resembles traditional art: it was designed primarily for people in African regions without electricity but abundant sunshine; Little Sun provides them with artificial light. While artistically Little Sun may not be remarkable, its social impact is significant: according to the Little Sun website, as of October 1, 2015, 339,149 lamps had already been sold, with at least 170,000 going to households that would otherwise have had no light. The lamp’s success inspired Eliasson and Ottesen to develop a solar-powered charger for phones as well. This Little Sun Charge (co-funded through a kickstarter campaign) has been available in shops since March 2016.

Ninety employees

Again, that power: as if Eliasson wants to increase the autonomy of his spectators/users through his work, however large or humble. To make his spectators think for themselves, become active, contribute to a better world. And with success: Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin has grown steadily in recent years and currently employs some ninety people, ranging from engineers and specialised technicians to cooks and carpenters who both produce dozens of artworks a year and work on Eliasson’s social projects. In this, his studio only knows its equal in other ‘Versailles artists’ such as Koons, Kapoor and Hirst: all artists who have long since left behind the classical-romantic status of solitary plodding genius and are now mainly feeding the capitalist monster via the production of large quantities of artistic products.

But what about Eliasson?

This is exactly where it gets interesting, because, like almost every successful ‘social artist’, Eliasson, by making his art increasingly social, has manoeuvred himself into an interesting split. On the one hand, through projects like Little Sun and Little Sun Charge, or by installing a large protest artwork during the Paris climate summit (a circle of 12 chunks of polar ice, laid down in the shape of a clock, which together represent the ticking away of time for the earth), he is undeniably trying to improve the world. But on the other hand, enabled by this enormous studio, he also helps a lot of works of art into the world and thus, to put it kindly, he does not exactly shirk capitalist principles such as increasing production and growth. He makes gigantic, crowd-pulling installations — not only The Weather Project, but also Waterfalls (five large waterfalls in New York) or Riverbed (a lifelike Icelandic landscape including a babbling river in the Louisiana in Humlebaek, Denmark). And how idealistic are you really, when on the one hand, you produce Little Sun, while at the same time creating major exhibitions for Versailles, for the kitsch Winter Palace in Vienna (in the winter of 2015-2016) and hosting the inaugural exhibition (last year) of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, funded by the eponymous, yet poorly associated with idealism brand? Is he himself the Sun King, or a slave to longstanding capital?

the POWER OF NATURE

To understand how Eliasson works, and how radical Eliasson’s endeavours are, we must go back to the basis of all contemporary art: Romanticism. It emerged at the end of the 18th century and represented a sharp break with the artistic tradition of the time. Until then, artists were mainly glorified craftsmen who transformed reality into paintings and sculptures for (rich) patrons in the most beautiful and stimulating way possible — ambitious, but subservient.

Romantic artists broke precisely with this servitude: they no longer wanted to be dependent on patrons or the outside world, no longer on state and church, but saw themselves as creators of their own world, gods in their own universe, who determined their own forms, laws and rules through their work and attitude to life. Only, and this was an important difference from the previous enlightenment: the romantic artist was at the same time very well aware of his own limitations. He may have the power to create his own universe, but he also knows that there are forces that he will never completely control: especially the forces of one’s own brain, and the forces of nature (and the two may ultimately be the same thing). Romantic art is thus the art of ambitious and self-centred searching, groping and trying — as a Romantic artist, you want to become a god in your own world, but you also live in the awareness that you will never rule that world alone. That idea defines much of art, to this day.

It is precisely in that mastery that Eliasson’s main ambition lies. Unlike all other artists of the Romantic tradition, Eliasson does not resign himself to traditional power. The first sign of this is that in his work he refuses to resign himself to the domination of nature, where every other ‘normal’ Romantic artist does. Instead, Eliasson creates nature itself. In recent years, his oeuvre developed into a veritable battle with the elements: he fills spaces with mist, creates waterfalls in the city, colours rivers green, as if he does not wish to resign himself to traditional natural domination.

Nothing romantic, nothing searching and uncertain: Eliasson is an unadulterated enlightenment artist, who is in the world to bend things to his will — and preferably change them. Viewed this way, his huge studio is also not a modern art factory like those of Murakami or Koons, but rather a traditional 17th-century studio where master and apprentices ‘produce’ art together. Eliasson often works with engineers and eagerly embraces any new technical development: he believes in change, mastery, technique.

HARDCORE ROMANTICS

It could hardly be more enlightening. And within the art world, this is a radical turnaround: with his emphasis on management and control, precisely of nature and society, traditionally elements from which the art world keeps itself far away, Eliasson breaks with the romantic tradition of the autonomous, socially independent artist who, while having every freedom, has surrendered his influence on society. Eliasson does things differently: for him, too, the artist may still be the ruler of his own universe, but he tries from that position to be subservient, to use his autonomy to share it with others. Viewed in this way, Eliasson’s modus operandi is an almost perfect paradox: he strives for maximum autonomy, influence, power and reach, but only to then share it with as many people as possible, thus challenging, undermining — and perhaps even replacing — the traditional form of artistic autonomy.

Like a true new Sun King.

Only, the traditional art world is clearly not ready for this. Which continues to judge Eliasson simply according to traditional romantic autonomous criteria. Does he have a powerful worldview of his own? (Yes!) Does he know how to renew himself? (Yes!) Does he know how to attract an audience and sell work? (Yes, he does!) Precisely because Eliasson seems to fit so wonderfully within those criteria, the traditional art world does not realise that he actually wants to be a Trojan horse: he uses his influence, his power to change as much as possible.

But how far can he go in this? When will the shore turn the ship? For now, Eliasson does not seem to care: he continues to quietly seduce his audience with his large installations, successfully positioning himself as the artist who makes artistic objects as well as lights produced according to the laws of the free market. Hardcore romantics call this opportunism, but Eliasson has a different mission: he realises that you can only change the art world from within that world itself, that as a sun (and as a king), you only gain power these days if you know how to relate to the other stars, the planets, the satellites and the intergalactic residue. Eliasson indeed wants to become a solar king, but over a new empire, with different laws, different rules, different standards from the art world we already know. Only then, he realises, will he rule — by his own standards.