Raemar Pink White, 1969
For over four decades, James Turrell has used light and space to bend and transform human perception. Turrell’s work has been the subject of more than 140 solo exhibitions worldwide since 1967. Since 1977, Turrell has been transforming a volcanic crater in the Arizona desert into a monumental work of art. James Turrell uses light as his medium; rather than paint, or sculpture, or drawing. Turrell creates art that is not an object, bur rather a perceptual experience.
James Turrell was born in Los Angeles, CA in 1943. Turrell’s mother trained as a doctor and taught zoology, his father worked as an aeronautical engineer, teacher, and junior college administrator. Turrell was the youngest of three children and raised a devout Quaker. By all standards, Turrell was an upstanding young man, an honor student and athlete, “Boy of the Year” in Pasadena in 1960, and student body president of his high school.
Being raised in a devout Quaker family, Turrell was not exposed to art. “I come from a family that does not believe in art to this day. They think art is vanity.” Turrell was skeptical of his family’s old-fashioned mores, even at a young age.
In 1965, Turrell graduated from Pomona College with a bachelor’s degree in perceptual psychology and extensive coursework in art, math, and astronomy. In 1966, he began the Studio Art graduate program at the University of California, Irvine. His studies were interrupted when he was caught coaching young men to avoid the Vietnam draft. Turrell spent a year in prison but eventually earned his MA in Studio Art from Claremont Graduate University in 1973.
After his release from prison in 1967, Turrell moved into a shuttered hotel, the Mendota Hotel, in Santa Monica and his experimentation with light and art began in earnest. Here Turrell laid the groundwork for many types of installations he would refine and revisit throughout his career.
His first light projection used a projector in a darkened, empty room. Turrell pointed the beam of light toward the corner, and created what appeared to be a solid cube of light floating in the corner that seemed to occupy physical space. As you approached the cube, it seemed to dissolve into immateriality. Soon Turrell was moving the project around the rooms, placing it at different angles, using colored slides, making rectangles, pyramids, and other shapes using only the projector light. Within months, Turrell began experimenting with different bulbs, first using the standard projector light, then a tungsten light, and later a more powerful quartz-halogen light. Some of these earliest pieces can be categorized into two types: Cross Corner Projections and Single Wall Projections.
End Around, 2006
Rayzor, 1982
Next, Turrell began experimenting with what were later called “Shallow Space Constructions.” The installations stemmed from his wanting to hide the light source. Turrell realized he could modify walls to create hidden chambers for the bulbs. A Shallow Space is viewed from the rear of a large room. A false wall is lit from behind and appears to float. Coving the corners of the walls and controlling the light challenges the viewer’s depth perception.
Though Turrell would create other types of light pieces during his time at the Mendota Hotel and onward, it was in 1969 that he began experimenting with what would become his most widely recognizable site-specific works, Skylights and Skyspaces. Turrell had begun to explore the notion of controlling the color of the sky. By creating a precisely placed hole in a wall or ceiling at the right vantage point, Turrell was able to eliminate the sense of depth, so the sky appeared to be painted directly on the ceiling. Turrell then pointed electric lights at the hole, marveling at the dissonance… He discovered that when he changed the color of the electric light, he could change the apparent color of the sky. He called these installations Skyspaces.
In April of 1974, the owner’s of the Mendota Hotel threw him out. Turrell had long sought to combine natural landscapes with his installations, further melding the natural with his installations. For the next seven months, Turrell canvassed the Southwestern United States in his small airplane searching for a natural setting where he could extend his explorations of light and space from the studio into the landscape.
His search lead him to the Roden Crater in the Painted Desert of Northern Arizona. For the past four decades, James Turrell has been transforming the crater into a large-scale artwork that relates, through the medium of light, to the universe of the surrounding sky, land and culture. With millions in funding, Turrell’s project has moved over 1.2 million cubic yards of dirt, but maintained the natural integrity of the crater. Once finished, Roden Crater will contain 20 spaces, at least one Skyspace, and already has a completed 854' tunnel. Everything at Roden is oriented toward celestial occasions. Though not open to the public, Turrell has given tours to close friends, artists, journalists, and donors. Michael Govan, the Director of LACMA, has said of Roden, “I know I’m going out on a limb here a little bit, but I think it’s one of the most ambitious artworks ever attempted by a single human being.”
“The Quakers often talk about the light inside… the light inside everyone. My grandmother talked literally about this relationship between the light inside and the light outside. Even with the eyes closed, we have vision, as in a dream. My grandmother believed the purpose of meditation or contemplation was to wait upon the Lord and meet up with the light inside. The temple is within.” Turrell has been driven both by the influence of his faith and his fascination with light, human perception, and experience. “I had an interest in art, but my first interest was actually in light. I was always fascinated by light… I look at light as a material. It is physical. It is photons. Yes, it exhibits wave behavior, but it is a thing. And I’ve always wanted to accord to light its thing-ness,” Turrell.
Arca Green, 1968
The impact Turrell has made and continues to make on the art world is art as an experience. Turrell was not the first artist to use light as his medium, nor will he be the last. What Turrell has almost perfected is the experience for the viewer. Fellow artist and friend, Chuck Close said of Turrell “he’s an orchestrator of experience, not a creator of cheap effects. And every artist knows how cheap an effect is, and how revolutionary an experience.”
With 79 site-specific installations in 25 countries and 21 states, including a Skyspace in the famous Guggenheim rotunda, James Turrell has become one of the world’s most famous artists. Turrell has accomplished this feat using only one medium, light. Turrell has said “I want people to treasure light as we treasure gold, silver, and of course, paintings,” and once you experience Turrell piece, you will know he succeeded.
Arca Green, 1968
Akhab, 2013