James Turrell
I like to work with it so that you feel it physically, so you feel the presence of light inhabiting a space. My desire is to set up a situation to which I take you and let you see. It becomes your experience.Collection: Space
All art is contemporary art because it had to be made when it was now.Collection: Art
We're made for the light of a cave and for twilight. Twilight is the time we see best. When we dim the light down, and the pupil opens, feeling comes out of the eye like touch. Then you really can feel colour, and experience it.Collection: Experience
We have spent billions to go to the moon - we go to this lesser satellite called the moon and say we are in space, but we are in space right now; we just don't feel ourselves to be in space. Some forms of art and some forms of spirituality do give us that sense.Collection: Space
In age of consumerism and materialism, I traffic in blue sky and colored air.Collection: Age
I am involved in the architecture of space.Collection: Architecture
I like to use light as a material, but my medium is actually perception. I want you to sense yourself sensing - to see yourself seeing.
This wonderful elixir of light is the thing that actually connects the immaterial with the material - that connects the cosmic to the plain everyday existence that we try to live in.
I sell blue sky and coloured air.
At my first exhibits, people were saying that's just a light on the wall.
There is an idea, first of all, of vision fully formed with the eyes closed. Of course the vision we have in a lucid dream often has greater lucidity and clarity than vision with the eyes open.
The sky always seems to be out there, away from us. I like to bring it down in close contact with us, so you feel you are in it. We feel we are at the bottom of this ocean of air; we are actually on a planet.
Nowhere in the job description of an artist is the requirement that I must validate your taste.
You can't stop demographics. And show me a fence that ever worked. It didn't work at Hadrian's Wall. The Great Wall of China didn't work. The Berlin Wall.
It's possible to gather light that's older than our solar system.
The lunar cycle within the solar season: that kind of syncopated rhythm is what life relates to.
I would describe Los Angeles as actually not having taste. In New York, there's taste. But you have to remember that taste is censorship. It's a form of restriction.
My art has no object, no image, no point of focus.
We think we receive all that we perceive, but in fact, we actually give the sky its colour.
I want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed with seeing... like the wordless thought that comes from looking in a fire.
Light knows when you're looking at it.
There's traditionally been a large disconnection in contemporary art between the audience and the artist. Generally, audiences are looking towards what they like, and I can tell you, that's the last thing on an artist's mind.
We live within this reality we create, and we're quite unaware of how we create the reality.
If you're not an optimist, forget being an artist.
I don't know if I believe in art. I certainly believe in light.
In a way, light unites the spiritual world and the ephemeral, physical world. People frequently talk about spiritual experiences using the vocabulary of light: Saul on the road to Damascus, near-death experiences, samadhi or the light-filled void of Buddhist enlightenment.
I look at light as a material. It is physical. It is photons. Yes, it exhibits wave behavior, but it is a thing.
Light itself is a revelation.
Color is just in a small area of our vision, and the rest we add with the mind.
One of the tenets in Quaker meditation is that you 'go inside to greet the light.' I am interested in this light that's inside greeting the light that's outside.
The Quakers don't believe in music or art; they think it's a vanity.
Las Vegas is about distraction.
If you take blue paint and yellow paint and you mix them, you get green paint. But if you take blue light and yellow light and mix them, you get white light. This is a shock to most people.
It's really terrific to see Pittsburgh recognize the Mattress Factory.
There are different stages when you fly. The first stage is the dollhouse effect, seeing everything on Earth like it's a model. Suddenly, all of your concerns seem very small.
The cardones cactus is very similar to saguaro cactus in Arizona. These cacti only grow in very specific, particular places.
I've always been interested in arrival, and coming to a space, and even to looking back at where you were.
I like illusion when it is so convincing that we might as well see reality this way - I like to present to our belief system something that is convincing, that 'we know not to be.'
I feel my work is made for one being, one individual. You could say that's me, but that's not really true. It's for an idealized viewer.
Sometimes I'm kind of cranky coming to see something. I saw the Mona Lisa when it was in L.A., saw it for 13 seconds and had to move on.
Drake went through my exhibition. I did meet him in Los Angeles, and he was in the spaces that I did do there, and has some images from that.
Light is a powerful substance. We have a primal connection to it. But, for something so powerful, situations for its felt presence are fragile.
At Roden Crater, I was interested in taking the cultural artifice of art out into the natural surround. I wanted the work to be enfolded in nature in such a way that light from the sun, moon and stars empowered the spaces. I wanted to bring culture to the natural surround as if one was designing a garden.
I come from a family that does not believe in art to this day. They think art is vanity.
My mother did not have a toaster oven and would toast bread in the oven, which I thought was stupid. They didn't do cars and electricity, that kind of stuff.
The works of previous artists have come from their own experiences or insights but haven't given the experience itself. They had set themselves up as a sort of interpreter to the layman... Our interest is in a form where you realize that the media are just perception.
I have high expectations of my audience, and in general, I would say they've met that.
When you sit down and see someone play at a piano, you don't think, 'Wow - what a fantastic machine.'
This idea that light plays an important part in our life is important to me.
I come from L.A. where there's a sense of show. But that's not a bad word in my mind. We say art 'show,' don't we? 'Show' implies entertainment.