Neon is one of what Andy Warhol called “the great modern things” – a kind of lovely thing that can only exist in the modern world.
Neon is up in lights, again. The gaseous element whose glamorous glow has been appropriated by one artist after another since the 1960s is now crossing from contemporary art into every cultural field going. It pulses in the National Theatre’s hit Angels in America, shines ethereally white in the artwork for Arcade Fire’s Everything Now and gleams a sleazy violet in ads for Netflix’s wrestling comedy Glow.