Flickering Light: A History of Neon. Cet article n’est pas disponible.Flickering Light: A History of Neon

Neon signs exemplify the ambivalence of modernity. For some observers, these glowing tubes stand for crass commercialism and seedy back alleys, while for others they light the way to the very heart of popular culture. Energized by this tension, Flickering Light traces neon’s technological, social and cultural history, from its beginnings in a late nineteenth-century London laboratory through its ubiquitous status in the world’s urban landscapes to its blinking presence in our contemporary art spaces. Christoph Ribbat shows how colourful advertisements brought elegance to Western metropolises between the wars, and how a humble gas transformed a sleepy desert town into the Las Vegas we know today. Flickering Light follows writers such as Vladimir Nabokov and Nelson Algren and artists including Tracey Emin and László Moholy-Nagy through illuminated streets; it explores Theodor Adorno’s aversion to neon and the neon songs performed by Peggy Lee, Kraftwerk and others. Literature, music and film turned a pulsating advertising device into a powerful metaphor of modernity. And yet, only a few decades after their invention, neon signs were considered dated and began to embody the melancholy of run-down neighbourhoods and neglected businesses. Flickering Light thus tells the engrossing story of how a glowing tube of gas illuminated the world – and faded almost as quickly as it arrived.

Christoph Ribbat is Professor of American Studies at the University of Paderborn, Germany.