Being with dark and light

Hello friends,

Light and darkness was the theme this year at the Florence Biennale, which has just closed for this season. The theme was designed to bring out the hidden unity of apparent opposites, drawing from the oldest spiritual teachings and texts known to us today – the Ṛgveda from India and the Book of Changes (I Ching) in China. These texts both contain a key teaching about polarity, as symbolised by the yin and yang icon.

“Everything has its opposite and everything contains the seed (or a small part) of its opposite. Opposites have a mutual origin and one cannot exist without the other. Expansion and contraction. Order and disorder. Male and female. Day and night. Light and darkness. Good and evil.” 

Giovanni Cordoni, events manager at the Florence Biennale

Art and philosophy, in our civil world, gives us an opportunity to explore this concept of oneness, and are vital for our souls to understand the world around us. We use it to process the beauty, the finite, the transcendental, the contradictory, and the painful elements of human experience – helping us realise that we are not a single life playing a game of solitaire, but part of an expansive, time-bending whole. 

Seeing the light in darkness and vice versa allows us to open ourselves to negotiation, cooperation and respect. This balanced view of things creates a dialogue within ourselves too, so that we can approach our experiences with curiosity and kindness. 

This time of year is a perfect time to explore these deeper layers of meaning. The outside grows colder, the sun takes its time traversing the southern hemisphere, and we are invited to nest, to create pockets of warmth and slowness, times when we allow ourselves to be bored, be tired and look inwards. 

Ten thousand flowers in spring
by Wu-men

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn
A cool breeze in summer, snow in winter
When your mind is not clouded by unnecessary things,
This is the best season of your life.

Dark Matter by Billy Shannon

Dark matter is out there

Nearly 100 years after astronomer Fritz Zwicky predicted that there must be a gravitational influence that stopped planets whizzing apart from each other, dark matter may have been observed in the universe for the first time.

A team led by Tomonori Totani at the University of Tokyo have analysed data from the Fermi Gamma‑ray Space Telescope that includes 15 years’ worth of observations. They claim they’ve detected a “halo-like” glow of gamma rays around the middle of the Milky Way that matches what one would expect if dark matter particles were annihilating each other.

Researchers aren’t certain that this is dark matter, and future observations will be needed to confirm whether it is. 

Perhaps the most profoundly fascinating element of the universe is that it is not static or unchanging. The great vacuum beyond our atmosphere was at one time, born into existence, and continues evolving and expanding beyond any conceivable imagination. The greatest limitless mystery of the universe is a tantalising opportunity for our relatively limited time on earth. Our solar system has around 5 billion years left before the sun runs out of hydrogen fuel and begins to expand into a red giant. Humans have only existed in their various forms for millions of years, and we can’t be sure how long our variation of species and civilisation will prevail. From early humans to future generations, we look up at the sky and wonder if we are the only ones watching it, investigating it – if we’re the only ones able to form theories and observations over it. And what if we are? 

I’ve written before about the power of space to draw us closer to our home planet. The power of “out there” is really only important if we use it to better understand ourselves. The deepest reaches of astrophysics can only take us so far. Eventually, we will need to see that our incessant search outward is actually a desperate attempt to find inner meaning, and perhaps, that it is the meaninglessness of it all that gives it such radical significance.

A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery by Joseph Wright of Derby

Beauty and the shadows

So much of great painting and photography is light – just as so much of life is to do with the light we see it in. The beauty of a boring day can be transformed as the sun appears low under moving clouds, revealing that incandescent pinkness that puts the finest of nature’s filters on the faces of bare trees and gilds the tops of otherwise brutal buildings. The morning sun pouring between blinds can turn a quotidian cup of tea into a masterwork, a living watercolour. But what brings that light to life is the darkness from which it emerges.

We know about Rembrandt’s masterful use of light and shade. But this year, it’s time for Joseph Wright of Derby to have his moment. At the National Gallery until May next year, From the Shadows features the first major exhibition of Wright’s candlelight works. To look at them is to be transported to darkened lecture halls, or 18th-century parlour rooms, to feel the fascination of the Enlightenment era with its burgeoning scientific discoveries in both astronomy and the human body, as well as developments in art and mass urbanisation.

Derby uses light sparingly, to enormous effect. In “A Philosopher Giving That Lecture…” I can almost smell the wood varnish from the floor, the mustiness of heavy fabrics, and feel the stiff boots on my cold, woollen-stockinged feet. In “An Experiment on a Bird…”, the soft light brings the troubled faces of onlookers into near animation, as a bird perishes in the bell jar. Derby was unafraid of the dark as he was dark subjects, and the charm of his work is often at odds with the content. Light and dark appear at once, becoming more special not despite but because of each other.

Wright of Derby: From the Shadows is at the National Gallery until May 2026.

Until next time…

May you be happy, well, whole and free.

~~~~~~

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