INTRODUCTION
From his early years, James Turrell (° 1943, Los Angeles) has been
fascinated with light. His mother made it clear to him what to do in a
Quaker meeting with the ominous words: 'Go inside and greet the light.'
But also his father, an aeronautical engineer, gave him a boost: at
sixteen, he conquered the skies as a pilot where he could admire the
light of dawn and dusk and other mirages, UFOs included, that will
continue to fascinate him during his later life.Decisive for his
further career were his studies in perceptual psychology and art, during
which he discovered that he preferred the luminosity of slides -
especially those of Barnet Newman and Mark Rothko - above the original
paintings. Soon, James Turrell gets to work himself together with
artists like Robert Irwin and Maria Nordman in an informal group 'Light
and Space artists'.
Making art with light, it was in the air. Already in the fifties, Yves
Klein worked with fire and gas, and form the sixties onwards, Op Artists
began to use optical illusions, but soon also real light, such as the
neon tubes of Dan Flavin.
To create really transparent Rothkos, James Turrell initially wanted to
use fire or gas, like Yves Klein, but he soon prefers light from lamps.
Otherwise than the 'Atlantic' Dan Flavin, who, from 1963 onwards,
combined the light of his neon tubes with the reflection on the wall,
the 'Pacific' James Turrell concentrates on the coloured light projected
from a hidden source. He thereby creates the illusion that the
two-dimensional lighted surfaces are a three-dimensional object that
seems to float in the corner of the room - the <'Projection series' with
works like Afrum-proto (1966) and Decker (1967). In other works, the
illusion goes the other way round, as in the 'Shallow Space
Constructions' (1968-1970) and in works like Danae (1983): what appears
to be a two-dimensional surface, turns out to be a space filled with
light. A similar effect is obtained with natural light in 'Meeting'
(1986) in P.S.1 New York, where an opening in the ceiling discloses the
sky. In the nineties, Turrell replaces projected light with
computer-controlled neon tubes and LED lamps, as in the 'Tall Glass
series' or in his 'Motel Art' (1997) for the luxurious 'Mondrian Hotel'
in Los Angeles (designed by Philippe Starck). In a late echo of Nam June
Paik's tv-scapes, James Turrell has a rectangle of light on each floor
of the hotel change in colour and intensityaccording to the TV programs
they are tuned on.
Because the illusion only works when seen from a certain angle and after
adjustment of the eyes - and also to bring the visitors in the
appropriate mood - Turrell soon integrates the architectural setting in
his concepts. In works like 'Pleiades' (1983) and 'Danae' (1983), the
visitor has to enter the gallery through a dark, inclined corridor
before entering the room where the light is projected.
LIGHT SPACES
The integration of the surrounding architecture only facilitated the
obvious shift from light objects to light spaces, a step also made by
Dan Flavin - just think of his Richmond Hall(1996).
In a first variant (the 'Perceptual cells'), Turrell surrounds the head
('Alien exam', 1991, and Soft Cell', 1992) or the entire body
('Gasworks', 1993) with a sphere, lighted from within like a 'Ganzfeld'.
In a second variant, Turrell proceeds to the real light environments of
the'Ganzfeld Series' and ''Wedgework Series'. In 'Frontal Passage'
(1994), the visitor passes through a darkened entryway into a chamber,
that is divided diagonally by a radiant wall of red light. In 'Rise'
(2005) the visitor contemplates a subtly changing light which emanates
from the edges of a block seemingly suspended in space. 'City of Anhirit'
((1976) consists of a sequence of four rooms where the afterimage of the
preceding room influences the perception of the colour in the next. One
thing and another culminates in the widely praised and successful 'Ganzfeld:
Tight End'(2006) installed in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park: a space
entirely flooded by blue light.
SKY SPACES
Meanwhile, James Turrell is heading into still another direction. When
making his light objects, he was revolting against the notion that art
is a commodity. Immaterial objects cannot be sold - as is also the case
with happenings. And with land-art, launched in 1968 in the Dwan Gallery
with figures like Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Richard Long,Robert
Morris, Robert Smithson and soon also Andy Goldsworthy. Nearer home,
Michael Heizer was carving his 'Double Negative' in the Nevada desert in
1969, and Robert Smithson was building his 'Spiral Jetty' in the Great
Salt Lake in Utah in 1970
The new trend certainly inspiredJames Turrell to transform an extinct
volcano into a kind of observatory: his famous>'Roden Crater project' in
Flagstaff, Arizona, initiated in1972. 400.000 cubic yards of cinder have
been moved to give the rim, which approximates a perfect circle, a
uniform height. Through a tunnel, the visitor is guided into an oval,
roofless chamber that seems to transform the sky into a dome. Tunnels
are so aligned that they capture the light of the setting sun at the
winter solstice and other celestial events, like in Stonehenge or the
Egyptian pyramids. In another space in the crater's secondary vent,
there is a warm bath that also acts like an apochromatic lens. An
ingenious apparatus makes the radio sources of the stars, sun, Jupiter
or the quasars audible. From the merger with light to union with the
cosmos or cosmic radiance.
'Roden Crater' is a long-term project. In expectance, James Turrell
erected by now some 36 more modest 'sky-spaces', many of them in private
'cottages' of the better endowed of this world, like the billionaire
James Goldstein. Let us mention 'Blue Blood' (1988) in Santa Fe, New
Mexico: a pyramidal structure reminding of the constructions of
Egyptians, Maya and Celts. 'Space that Sees' (1992) is a square chamber,
carved into a hillside at Jerusalem's Israel museum. Kielder Skyspace
(1996) at the Kielder Forest Park in Northumberland is a buried
cylindrical chamber entered through a tunnel and capped by a roof with a
opening in its centre. For the solstice on August 11 in 1999, Turrell
designed the 'The Elliptic Ecliptic' onSt. Michael's Mount (England,
UK). In 'House of Light' (2000) in Naoshima (Japan) is conceived as a
guesthouse for meditation where you can stay before contemplating the
sunset. In 2003, Turrell presents an elliptical space 'Light Reign' in
de 'Henry Art Gallery' . At night, the exterior is lit in gradually
changing colours by thousands of LED. lamps embedded in glass panels.
Three Gems is un underground installation in the shape of a stupa. The
interior is lit by LED lamps adapted to the changing light and colour of
the sky, that is visible through an opening in the ceiling. One of the
most recent sky spaces is 'Deer Shelter' (2005) in the Yorkshire
Sculpture Park: a corridor ending up in a white cube above which the sky
expands.
Apart from Roden Crater in Arizona, there is another more ambitious
project, this time in Celtic surroundings: 'Irish Sky Garden' (1992),
comprising an elliptical crater, a softly rounded hill, a pyramid and a
yard-like space around. James Turrell was also responsible for the
lighting in the Millennium-Dome’s Chill-Out-Zone, and the uncompleted
and now abandoned Thames Light Project, an integrated lighting scheme
installed in the water, under bridges, and on tops of buildings on both
banks of the river. He also dreams of projects that are even more
ambitious and Roden Crater: a sky space on Mars.
Let us take a broader historical perspective to better understand the
creations of Turrells work. Light art is not an invention of Turrell or
Dan Flavin. To begin with, there are the countless colour organs that
have been developed in the wake of Louis-Bertrand Castel ever since
1725, the already more sophisticated machines designed in the Wchutemas
and the Bauhaus, the many abstract films form the twenties onwards,
projects like Ivan Vyshnegradsky's 'Temple of Light', Skriabin's
'Prometheus' (1911), Kandinsky's 'Yellow sound', Schönberg's 'Glückliche
Hand' (1913), the 'Phillips Pavillion' (1958) with Varèse and Xenakis
and Luigi Nono's initial concept for the 'Prometeo' (1984. the
'spectaculars' with light bulbs from the thirties onwards, the
neon-architecture like in the former Las Vegas,not to mention the
lightshows in the contemporary dance temples, especially the
sophisticated creations of figures like Carsten Nicolai.
The examples above remind us of the fact that Turrell - as opposed to
comparable figures like Adams in his 'Colour Organ' (2005) - is not out
at integrating light and music into a 'Gesamtkunstwerk'. Rather does he
conceive his works as
visual music. Often, he compares the gradual
evolution of his colours with musical variations: a late echo of an idea
that, from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, lies at
the roots of the development of abstract (or non- literary) painting. In
that respect, Turrell's saying that 'We're doing much better with sound
and with music than with light'(Whittaker) seems a little bitoutdated.
Let us also remark - with some amazement - that Turrell does not flirt
with the idea of synaesthesia. If it is mentioned at all, there is
rather talk of the tangibility of light than of the audibility of sound:
'The eyes feel, like touch, like when you look into the eyes of a lover
and experience that intensity of touch with the eyes.' (Vicky Lindner*)
LIGHT MYSTICISM
Initially, Turrell understands his preference for transparent light in
purely artistic terms - in terms of medium - as the counterpart to the
reflecting light of traditional painting, sculpture and architecture.
But, increasingly, he is talking about the union with light, if not with
the cosmos. In the beginning, he comes to refer to the neurological and
psychological aspects of seeing. Gradually, Turrell stresses the
fascinating character of the transparent light, especially that of fire
and the blue sky of sunsets. These phenomena borrow their appeal from
the fact that they seem to release us from the customary visual world,
where we are surrounded by limited, tangible and material objects which
mercilessly confine us in the equally limited, tangible and physical
body in which we so unwillingly descended (see:
The infant in the mirror).
Our last resort is the construction of an inner world behind the surface
of our skin, where we hope to find refuge as a soul or a spiritual
being. The sight of transparent worlds seems to dissolve that material
envelope, so that our immaterial body seems to expand and submerge in an
outer-worldly ether, where we seem to be released, not only form
disease, decay and death, but above all from the role that our
individuated body has to play amongst the countless malicious or
indifferent and scarce benevolent players in the sublunary theatre
below.
Like most mortals, Turrells prefers another approach. We hear about
another state of being induced by staring into transparent light and
about the transparent light in lucid dreams and near dead experiences.
Katy Beinart even refers to Shamsoddin Lahiji, a 15th-century Sufi. And
finally, Turrell is talking of feelings of transcendence and the Divine,
and of disclosing a new, spiritual dimension of existence. This trend is
sealed with the exhibition in Berlin 2001: 'On the Sublime: Mark Rothko,
Yves Klein, James Turrell'. This approach has its bearings on the
display of the works: they often are disposed like altars in a church
(with benches in front of it).
Let us remark that, at first glance, Turrell's 'spiritual awakening' is
in line with the 'Go inside and greet the light' of the Quakers. Away
from any established creed, the Quakers live by individual religious
beliefs and inner revelations. No wonder, then, that Turrell designed
the Live Oaks Meeting House with an opening or skyhole in the roof for
the Quaker Society of Friends. The question remains, however, whether
the 'Turrell experience' is not rather part of the far more superficial
idiosyncratic cocktail of exotic religions and astrology that many
people prepare since the emptying of the churches in our Western World.
Also Roden Crater itself is not more than a private, self-declared
version of Stonehenge or the Pyramids in the Old and New World. We
cannot but be reminded of that other - although totally opposite -
private religion concocted by another artist turned into a high priest:
Hermann Nitsch' 'Orgien Mysterien Theater' in Prinzendorf (Austra).
DESIGN
We have landed in the world of religion and mysticism. Time to ask
ourselves some questions about the relation of Turrell's work with art.
For Turrell himself, there is no doubt. He understands himself as an
artist, and found his way through extrapolating some tendencies in op
art and land art. But Turrell has his roots reach even further in the
history of art. In aninterview met Vicki Lindner*, he compares his
works with Monet's haystacks - without haystacks: 'You'd be looking at
your seeing. This is direct experience, as opposed to interpreted
experience. On occasion of his Kielder skyspace, Turrell refers to the
skies of Constable and Turner. Only through inscribing himself in the
history of painting, and not in the history of 'visual music' as
described above, can he assert: 'We are a primitive culture in terms of
light. We are just beginning. So I have to make the instruments, as well
as to make the symphony with it.' (Whittaker*)
Not only Turrell himself situates himself in the tradition of painting,
also the art market and its acolytes all too willingly assist him in
this endeavour. To begin with, there are the countless phrasings like:
'using the sky as a canvas' , 'painting with light' or 'sculpting with
light' ,just like with figures like Dan Flavin. But also the titles of
exhibitions speak volumes. In "On the Sublime: Mark Rothko, Yves Klein,
James Turrell" (Berlin 2001), Yves Klein and James Turrell are
considered to be heirs to the painter Rothko.
Such assimilation overlooks the fact that the step from Rothko (or from
Constable and Turner) to Turrell is a step from conjuring up imaginary
light spaces on a two-dimensional plane, to the creation of really
three-dimensional creations with real transparent light. And that step
seals the transition from an conjured up world (art) to a real world,
equally created by man, and hence to design (see: 'Art en mimesis'). To
be sure, initially, there is an echo of mimesis in the works where
three-dimensional objects are conjured up through two-dimensional light
on the wall. But this is a form of 'trompe-l'oeil' - mimesis that
annihilates itself through becoming deception (see 'Mimesis and
deception'): witness the incident in the Whitney museum where visitors
broke their wrists because they wanted to lean on one of Turrell's
'walls'. In his later works, also this last remnant of mimesis dwindles
away: we are dealing with plain three-dimensional lighting forms which -
thanks to the widening of the pupil in dark spaces - make the light
almost tangible. Turrell himself resists a mimetic approach of his work:
'I strenuously object to the idea that this work is an illusion. These
works allude to what they really are - a space occupied by a different
kind of light.' (Vickie Lindner*). In that sense, Turrell is not an
artist, but, not otherwise than Yves Klein, a designer.
That goes also for Turrell's light spaces. Certainly, Turrell's special
light often lends a quasi tactile quality to space, but that goes also
for the incense in Gothic cathedrals, where the light coloured through
the windows creates an equally mystic atmosphere, that is nevertheless
equally real. And that, Turrell has in common with other artists like
Pieter Vermeersch, who also paints his spaces with (albeit reflecting)
and thus turns out to be a spatial designer.
Also the sky spaces, finally, are mimetic - with the same reserves for
the trompe-l'oeil as above - in so far as for instance Roden Crater
creates the illusion that the sky is a starred dome and not and endless,
deep space. In so far as they function as a window on celestial
phenomena like eclipses, or on dusk and dawn, we are dealing with
architectural 'pedestals' for
displayed reality, comparable to
Stonehenge or Egyptian temples and pyramids. The bath in Roden Crater
where cosmic radiation becomes audible, on the other hand, is pure
design, nearly distinguishable form the comparable commercial
'installation' in the contemporary wellness centres, the
religious/mystical legitimation included.
Thus, James Turrell, turns out to be the umpteenth example of an artist,
who, in the guise of a further development of art, is only transgressing
the boundaries of art and proceeds to displaying reality or creating
real objects and real spaces: (spatial) design. The anti-mimetic fervour
that lies at the roots of this move, is all too apparent form the fact
that James Turrell repeatedly stresses that his works are 'abstract': '
I don't use light as a carrier of content, as a movie does'... Or: 'My
art deals with light itself. It's not the bearer of revelation - it is
the revelation.'
HEAVEN ON EARTH
"James Turrell's work is perhaps the nearest some of us will ever get to
heaven'.
Susan Young
That is probably why James Turrell's work is so incredibly popular, just
like that of Donald Judd. Not to mention that of
Andreas Gursky,
although, at first sight, it is totally opposite. But Gursky and Turrell
do not more than releasing the poor mortals from the horrors of
existence: Gursky through having them submerge in an abundance of
details, Turrell through having them submerge in their own inner light,
totally in accordance with the gradual transformation of museums in
amusement parks: just think of the equally enormously popular slides of
Carsten Höller in the Tate...
Granted, the fact that a billionaire like James F. Goldstein makes a
daily pilgrimage to his private Turrell chapel - a skyspace in his
'modest cottage' in Hollywood - should raise some doubts about the real
nature of Turrell 'spiritual awakening'....
© Stefan Beyst, April 2007
*
Some references:
BEINART, Katy: 'Power of Light', Resurgence, 2006, Issue 237.
CRAIG, Adcock: The Other Horizon. An overview of Turrell's development
from 1967 to 2001'. (ISBN 3-7757-9062-4)
CRAIG ADCOCK: 'James Turrell : the art of light and space by Craig
Adcock'. (ISBN 0-520-06728-2)
GEHRING, Ulrike: 'Bilder Aus Licht: James Turrell Im Kontext der
Amerikanischen Kunst Nach 1945, Powell, 2007.
GONZALES, Valérie: 'The Comares Hall in the Alhambra; Space that Sees by
James Turrell'
LAAKSONEN, Esa: 'Interview with James Turrell', Reprinted from ARK The
Finnish Architectural Review.
LINDNER, Vicki: 'James Turrell - artist - Interview', Omni, Winter 1995
MEURIS, Jacques: 'James Turrell. La perception est le medium', La Lettre
Volée, Bruxelles 1995.
SHTERENBERG, Marina: 'Unnlimited-Continuous-Finite-Faraway and
Contiguous'
WHITTAKER, Richard: 'Greeting the Light. an Interview with James Turrell'
referrers:
Arquitectura de interiores
Steven
Coppens
Paul Borsboom