JamesTurrell by Craig Adcock

Florida State University Gal-lery & Museum PROJECT SUPPORT AND ORGANIZATION FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

This project was supported in part by a grant from the Bernard F. Sliger, President National Endowment for the Arts, a Federal Agency. Augustus B. Turnbull Ill, Provost and Vice-President for Academic Affairs Portions of this project were sponsored by the National J. L. Draper, Dean, School of Visual Arts and Dance Endowment for the Arts and the State of Florida, Division of Cultural Affairs, and the Florida Arts Council. All sponsored programs prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, color, national origin, sex, handicap UNIVERSITY GALLERY & or age in accordance with federal law. MUSEUM STEERING COMMITTEE

Exhibition March 10-April 16, 1989, organized by the Tom Anderson, Professor of Art Education Florida State University Gallery & Museum, curated by Robert Fichter, Professor of Art Craig Adcock. Craig Adcock is currently Professor of Art Cynthia Hahn, Professor of Art History History at the University of Notre Dame. His book on Robert Hobbs, Professor of Art History James Turrell is forthcoming from the University of Mark Messersmith, Professor of Art California Press. Tasuku Ohazama, Professor of Interior Design Greg Presley, Professor of Dance Paul Rutkovsky, Professor of Art

Student representatives: Paige Bednarek, Art History PUBLICATION Chris Landry, Art Tad Quinlan

Text and Design: Craig Adcock, Professor of Art History, University of Notre Dame STAFF Production Editor, Grantswriter and Administrator: Allys Palladino-Craig, Director, Florida State University Gallery & Museum Allys Palladino-Craig, Director Patrick McCune, Curator of Exhibits Typography: RapidoGraphics, Inc., Tallahassee Gretchen Janke, Registrar Printing: Gandy Printers, Inc., Tallahassee Jennifer Clay, Fiscal Officer Chris Landry, Preparator © Copyright 1989/FSU Gallery & Museum Julian Graham School of Visual Arts and Dance/). L. Draper, Dean Marilyn Hinson Al I rights reserved Andrea Josey Deidre Kendrick Elizabeth Kick Laura Lux Chrissy Moseley Kate Pridmore COVER Christopher Saliga Desiree Serrano James Turrell, Mendota Stoppages, 1969. Detail from stage Heather Shaw 8. Private Collection, Pasadena, California. Photo: James Joann Weaver Turrell, courtesy of the Artist. Amy Wieck

4 LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum/New York In 1983 the University Gallery & Museum embarked The Lannan Foundation/Los Angeles, California upon an initial collaboration with critic Craig Adcock Daniel and Rotraut Moquay Collection which was to be the first of many. Now six years and six Museum of Art, University of Arizona/Tucson projects later, we at Florida State University have three new The Museum of Contemporary Art/Los Angeles, California events to celebrate: Professor Adcock's curatorship of this Phoenix Art Museum/Phoenix, Arizona important exhibition, his catalogue authorship from the James Turrell, Skystone Foundation/Flagstaff, Arizona vantage point of a fruitful relationship between the Artist and himself, and the success of both men as the University of California Press undertakes the forthcoming Adcock book on James Turrell. This convergence of paths-James Turrell's, Craig Ad­ cock's, and that of this institution-has been made possible by generous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Florida Arts Council, and the faith and phi­ lanthropy of the Artist's Collectors. Without the Lenders to this exhibition, neither the scope and heroic nature of the Artist's Roden Crater Project, nor the rich spectrum of his light installations could be appreciated as fully. To create a palpable experience from a phenomenon as pure and ephemeral as light is a genius revealed to us by the Artist's works installed here and set into context by the companion text of the catalogue: to both Artist and Author we express our admiration and gratitude. To Mr. Turrell's talented as­ sistant Craig Baumhofer-for technical wizardry on the bones beneath the creations in this exhibition-again our heartfelt thanks. Closest to home, it gives us great delight to acknowledge the support and encouragement of Florida State University President Bernard Sliger and of Jerry L. Draper, Dean, School of Visual Arts and Dance, during this 1989 Spring Celebration of the Arts. On behalf of the staff of the University Gallery & Mu­ seum and the members of our Steering Committee, it is a pleasure to welcome you to this happiest of occasions. Allys Palladino-Craig Director James Turrell, Arcus, 1989, a mixed-light installation at Florida State University Gallery & Museum; the quality of light was altered in the late afternoon by the westerly sun. Assisting the Artist in the construction were Craig Baumhofer, the Staff of the University Gallery, and the following dedicated volunteers: Craig Adcock; Rick Asadourian; Michael Bartoszewicz; Margaret Brommelsiek; Rolf Brommelsiek; Roger Campbell; Greg Carter; Barbara Clark; Kevin Cook; David Crook; Bart Frost; Tzu-Shan Liang; Brian Marshall; Nazek Mikati; Julie Moore; Erika Romeus; W.T. Stinson and Chris Lau, for technical aspects of electrical installation; and most particularly the expertise and continuous involvement of John Woodworth. Photo: Bill Langford, Florida State University. James Turrell was first recognized as a member of the between an object and our consciousness of it." 1 Sobel California avant-garde during the last part of the 1960s. might have added Turrell's works to his list of unusual cate­ Since that time, he has taken a number of radical ap­ gories because they too make us aware that light exists proaches to making art. Perhaps the most startling aspect of between us and our perceptions. Turrell's light images re­ his work is its near·axiomatic directness. Turrell uses light to veal what is normally lost amid the welter of things and create sculpture out of what we normally think of as empty obscured by the simple act of seeing structure in the am­ space. He manipulates perception itself and, over the years, bient array. has succeeded in finding innovative ways of making pure After Turrell made his decision to use pure light, he was radiant energy perceptible as substance. He makes it possi­ faced with the problem of how to go about making the art. ble for us to see light as light rather than illumination on How do you sculpt intangible electromagnetic flux? As he objects. In an interesting scientific discussion of the elec­ explains, there were essentially no precedents in the history tromagnetic spectrum, physicist Michael Sobel points out of art for working with light directly: "One of the difficulties how unusual it is for us to think of light in its own terms: of using light is that there isn't yet a tradition of using it in "We see not light but objects, constructed by the brain from our culture. On the one hand, it is no more unusual to use it information passed along the optic nerve. We construct than to use stone, clay, steel, or paint. These are materials shapes, colors, textures, and motion." Sobel then reminds that you honor, and to that degree I was interested in using us that "often it is only the peculiarities of light's behavior­ light as material-not light in glass, scrim, or plexiglass, but the distorted view of objects under water, the left-handed light in the space itself and the qualities of space-making image in a mirror, or the play of sunlight on wavelets on a light without traditional physical form. There is a rich tradi­ lake-that call our attention to the existence of something tion in painting of work about light, but it is not light-it is

7 ames Turrell with Robert Irwin and Edward Wortz at Garrett Aerospace, Los Angeles, 1968. Photo: Malcolm Lubliner, :ourtesy of the Artist. the record of seeing. My material is light, and it is respon­ the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and his sive to your seeing-it is non-vicarious." 2 By emphasizing 1986 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in the "non-vicarious" aspect of his art, Turrell draws our at­ Los Angeles, Turrell has delighted museum visitors with the tention to the inherent fascination involved in confronting simple beauty of light and the profound significance of di­ light. Through our encounters with his works, we become rect seeing. In his ethereal light and space sculptures, the aware of the powers of our own seeing. object of the art-and the art object-becomes the basic Perceiving perceiving, or seeing seeing, to use the di­ process of perceiving, and perhaps because they function at rect parallelism Turrell himself prefers, has been at the cen­ such fundamental levels, they are timeless. At the present ter of his art since the beginning. His decision to work with art historical moment, somewhere near the end of the Post­ light was reinforced by one of his earliest artistic oppor­ Modern, Turrell's images are as dynamic and relevant as tunities. During 1968 and 1969, he participated in the Art & ever. Technology Program organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Turrell worked with fellow artist Robert Irwin and experimental psychologist Edward Wortz, a sci­ entist who at that time headed the life-science division of Garrett Aerospace, a firm subcontracting work for NASA's Apollo Program. The collaboration was important in terms of what Turrell, Irwin, and Wortz learned about the poten­ tialities of taking a perceptual approach to art making. Their project involved combining a totally homogeneous visual field, or a Canzfeld as it is called in perceptual psychology, with a sound-damped aural space generated by an ane­ choic chamber. Unfortunately, this work was not realized, but had they managed to complete such an environment, it would have encouraged focusing directly on the inner workings of seeing and hearing. Despite the fact that no physical work was produced for the Art and Technology Program, the collaboration was judged a success by all concerned. Jane Livingston in her essay about the collab­ oration in the catalogue for the exhibition that opened in 1971 argued that "the ramifications of the 'Irwin/Turrell/Gar­ rett project' so far transcend the immediate parameters of [the program] that it is not possible for us fully to know, much less to document, every phase or outcome of the ongoing work set in motion by the original [Art and Tech­ nology] connection ." 3 The advanced nature of the art and the speculative daring of the approach helps to explain why, in 1984 some fifteen years later, Turrell and Irwin became the first artists to be awarded MacArthur Foundation Fel­ lowships. As did the early Art and Technology Program, the MacArthur Foundation assists talented individuals in the pursuit of work that might otherwise be impossible for them James Turrell, 1983-84. Photo: Dick Wiser, courtesy to achieve-work with the potential of revealing new in­ of the Artist. sights for us al I. Turrell has for some twenty years now been producing art that meets such expectations. In pieces that range from high-intensity projections to subtle blushes of color operat­ ing at the limits of perceptibility, he has managed to find remarkable ways of persuading light to fill the void of open space. In these terms, he should be credited as an initiator in the California Light & Space movement. Along with such artists as Larry Bell, Maria Nordman, Douglas Wheeler, and Robert Irwin, he has endeavored to make direct perception a central part of the art experience. In a series of exhibi­ tions, including his important 1976 one-man show at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, his 1980 retrospective at

9 3mes Turrell, Afrum-Proto, 1966. Quartz-halogen projection, as installed inside the second studio space of the ilendota Hotel, c. 1970. Private Collection, Pasadena, California. Photo: James Turrell, courtesy of the Artist.

0 CROSS-CORNERPROJECTION PIECES

Among the first approaches Turrell used to make light had earlier seemed to be lost in the glare, simply disappear. inhabit space was the projection of high-intensity rectilinear In other words, the "solidity" gives way or yields on ap­ images onto carefully prepared smooth white walls. While proach. Up close, we have no trouble seeing that the shape still a graduate student at the University of California at actually consists of flat light on adjacent wall surfaces. Irvine in 1966, Turrel I created Afrum, a work now retitled The fact that the shape can occupy a kind of fluid Afrum-Proto, using a Leitz slide projector modified by the perceptual state between three-dimension<1Jityand two-di­ addition of a Quartz-Halogen source. During 1967, a series mensionality is of interest to Turrell. He says that it is impor­ of Cross-Corner Projection Pieces-including Catso and tant that we be able to reconstruct the experience. If we step Shanta, and a redone version of Afrum-were created using back into the center of the room, the panel of light again more versatile xenon projectors designed with the help of looks three-dimensional. "As you look at a piece, or an Leonard Pincus, a Los Angeles lighting expert. Each of the experience, you assemble the piece," he explains. "As you differently shaped Cross-Corner Projections seems to make move on it, you can reassemble it. And the fact is that you pure light physically present while causing substantial per­ can go back in, and assemble it again, to its original state. ceptual changes in the spatial dynamics of the room in And yet having done that doesn't steal its magic. It's very which they are projected. In Turrell's words, the Cross-Co(­ important to me that you see it one way at first, and then it ner Projection Pieces "seemed to objectify and make phys­ reveals itself as something else. Then you go back and see ically present I ight as a tangible material. The space which that initial way again." 5 As indicated here, and something these pieces occupied was definitely not the same as that Turrell himself often points out, the word "illusion" is not which the room had without the image.''4 quite applicable to this kind of experience, at least not in The apparently solid images that make up the Cross­ the sense of the work being a trick th.at ceases to be as­ Corner Projection Pieces are projected through slide-sized tonishing when its secret is understood. The Cross-Corner templates into the corners of dimly lit rooms. The holes in Projections are illusions of a different, more complex order. the templates are shaped like hexagons or pentagons (and Turrell argues that these works operate in spatial realms in a few cases chevrons) depending on the angle of projec­ different from those usually engaged by art objects: "The tion from the projector that is placed near the ceiling in the space generated was analogous to a painting in two dimen­ opposite corner of the installation space. Due to the per­ sions alluding to three dimensions, but in this case three­ spective of the corner into which they are projected, the dimensional space was being used illusionistically. That is, shapes look solid. Especially from a distance, they appear the forms engendered through this quality of illusion did not to be three-dimensional chunks of light attached to the in­ necessarily resolve into one clearly definable form that tersection of the walls. The viewing situation is, however, would exist in three dimensions." 6 Rather than creating more complex than this description indicates. As we ap­ simple illusions of solid shapes, the Cross-Corner Projec­ proach the shape, the front surfaces of the volume, which tions map one 3-space onto another.

11 1mes Turrell, Shanta, 1967. Graphite on paper. Private Collection. Photo: courtesy of the Artist. James Turrell, Catso, 1967. Graphite on paper. Private Collection. Photo: courtesy of the Artist.

13 ames Turrell, Afrum, 1967. Xenon projection, as installed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980. Private :ollection, Milan. Photo: Warren Silverman, courtesy of the Artist.

4 James Turrell, Cacso-8/ue, 1967. Xenon light, as installed at the Lannan Museum, Lake Worth, Florida, 1987-88. Collection Lannan Foundation. ,..

15 James Turrell, Decker, 1967. Xenon projection, as installed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980. Collection of the Artist. Photo: Warren Silverman, courtesy of the Artist.

16 SINGLE-WALL PROJECTIONPIECES

The Single-Wall Projections map one 2-space onto an­ into abstract paintings. As do the Cross-Corner Projections, other. As the name implies, they consist of rectilinear areas of they seem to objectify light as a physical substance. In some intense light on single walls. Perceptually, the bright light cases, the high-intensity image seems to be on the surface, in rides on the surface of the flat expanse and has an infinitely others, it seems to create an energy corridor into a conjec­ thin spatial character. The wall seems to hold a tightly config­ tural space on the other side of the wall. In Phantom and ured but unbounded light region. The Single-Wall Projec­ Prado, the rectangular panels of light can be read as open­ tions were also developed during 1967 using xenon ings. In Tollyn, the light seems to ride"on a hypothetical projectors, and they too have considerable implication for superficies just inside the actual dimension of the room and the spaces they are projected into, but without the box-like creates an apparent zip through the corner of the space, characteristics of the Cross-Corner Projections. For this rea­ preventing the walls from meeting at the intersection. In son, they are perhaps less susceptible to being taken as Decker, the light image is tilted about 15 degrees from per­ illusions. Rather than creating the impression that a geo­ pendicular, and the angle tends to engender a torsional strain metrical solid composed of light is occupying the space, they on the inside boundary of the space. As in the Cross-Corner engage the entire volume of the room. Turrell points out that Projections, these kinds of perceptions are in large part under the Single-Wall Projections are essentially pictorial: "Each of our control and can be changed depending on where we these pieces dealt with the entire wal I surrounding the image position ourselves in relation to the light. From a distance, in such a way that the wall itself tended to function as the we read the high-intensity light as a luminiferous ether that traditional 'painting support."' 7 The Single-Wall Projec­ dissolves the physicality of the wall; up close, we read the tions, however, do more than turn sections of a wall surface image as simple illumination on a discrete surface.

17 James Turrell, Tollyn, 1967. Xenon projection, as installed inside the second studio space of the Mendota Hotel, c. 1968. Photo: James Turrell, courtesy of the Artist.

18 James Turrell, Prado, 1967. Graphite on paper. Private Collection. Photo: courtesy of the Artist.

James Turrell, Phantom, 1967. Graphite on paper. Private Collection. Photo: courtesy of the Artist. 19 James Turrell, Ronin, 1968. Fluorescent light, as installed at the Stedelijk Museum, 1976. Collection of the Artist. Photo: courtesy of the Artist.

James Turrell, Rayzor, 1968. Fluorescent and outside light, as installed at the Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, 1982. Collection of the Artist. Photo: Colleen Chartier, courtesy of the Artist. 20 SHALLOW-SPACECONSTRUCTIONS

Although the Projection Pieces create an interesting constructed, this space will be entered through a door in sense of light existing in space, Turrell was not fully satisfied the middle of one wall. The light streaming from all the with their reliance on hardware and, during 1968 and 1969, inside edges of the room will completely swamp our ability embarked on another series of works that affected space in to see the perspective of the room. We will look into a more subtle ways. The Shallow-Space Constructions are shallow space in any direction, or, more accurately, we will created using hidden fluorescent sources. In the first of look into an indefinite space in any direction. The interior these works, Ronin, a partition wall was constructed di­ will take on a dramatic open-endedness, and perceptually, rectly in front of an existing wall in his studio. A narrow slit the dimensions of the room will be indeterminate. We will was left open just at the corner of the room. The light fix­ have difficulty matching the recti Ii near configuration of the tures were placed behind the partition wall and illumina­ building we originally entered with the undecidability of tion filled the open space between the two walls creating a the inside volume's perceptual shape. The experiential as­ perceptual sense that a bright surface crossed the gap. Es­ pects of the space will be fully real, but also highly abstract. pecially from a distance, Ronin resembled the Single-Wall In all the Shallow-Space Constructions, the viewing cham­ Projection Tol/yn, but whereas Tollyn created an apparent ber of the piece becomes non-specific and devoid of shape. seam where an actual surface existed, Ronin created an The glow of radiant energy washes out the cues for dimen­ apparent surface where there was actually open space. In a sionality that we would normally use to articulate the ar­ related series of works-some of which Turrell mocked up rangement of the room. We encounter a basic level of in his studio and some of which were worked out only in perception that collapses the mythologies of Euclidean ge­ plan-the slit between the existing wall and the partition ometry. wall was extended to two, three, or four edges. Turrell means to index this kind of perception when he In Rayzor, a work also conceptualized in 1968 but not speaks of his pieces creating spaces that are more analo­ realized until 1982 at the Center on Contemporary Art in gous to the spaces of the imagination than to those of ordi­ Seattle, the slit goes all the way around the partition wall. nary experience: "The Cartesian space of three dimensions Fulgent light pours from the space behind the wall and the illu­ is, as all mathematical spatial concepts, a model which has mination obscures the spatial characteristics of the room. The evolved from the range of experiential reality as Descartes corners of the room cannot be seen clearly and the partition knew it. But if you are flying a plane his concepl holds true wall itself appears to be translucent. The perspective cues for for very short distances only. If you fly [between more the rectilinear confinement of the room cannot be read and widely separated points], you will reali~ that the curved the chamber folds up into a shallow space. Especially from a space of Riemann, in which the triangle can have more viewing position back from the partition wall, we cannot than 180 degrees, comes closer to reality. But even in this determine the actual distance between ourselves and the end case you tend to think, wrongly, that the mathematical of the space. Our perceptual situation is ambiguous and the model covers reality. We superimpose the model on reality, far wall seemsto float in a nearby plane. In Turretl's terms, "the and believe that the model actually is reality. The space we dimensional ityof the physical limits of the space and the glow experience subjectively through our observation is more of the reflected light that permeates the entire room make the bizarre. It is a space that comes close to dreams." 9 The kind illusionistically worked, hypothetical space one with the of space created by the Shallow-Space Constructions is per­ room space."8 In a series of planned pieces, the partition haps even more abstract than the obscurely remembered walls are extended to other combinations including one in space of dreams. It is also more real. The quality of the light which the seams surround all possible corners and margins reveals what is actually there, but what is actually there is at the side and end walls and the floor and ceiling. When unfamiliar.

21 Mendota Hotel, c. 1970. Photo: James Turrell, courtesy of the Artist.

22 MENDOTASTOPPAGES

Many of Turrell's earliest breakthroughs, including the trolled their light-receptive chambers. At night, the elaboration of the Projection Pieces and the Shallow-Space Stoppages were powered primarily by artificial sources and Constructions, were achieved at his first studio inside the during the day primarily by sunlight. In both the day and the old Mendota Hotel, a building located at the intersection of night aspects of the work, Turrel I placed I ight on walls as Hill and Main Streets in Ocean Park, California. Turrell image or suspended it along narrow slices of space inside rented the studio shortly after leaving graduate school in the studio rooms. To create the Mendota Stoppages, Turrell 1966. He had rooms on the first and second floors and used reopened the building to outside light and then formalized the back part of the building as living quarters and two large a group of apertures that allowed light into the inside spaces rooms at the front of the ground floor as working spaces. in an orchestrated manner. This musical description is apt Among the first things he did to the interior spaces was to given the title of his drawing, Music for the Mendota, a close them off from outside light sources. Walls were con­ diagram that explains the workings of the various light structed in front of all the existing windows, and all the "stoppages." As can be seen in the drawing, the audience inside surfaces including the ceilings and floors were moved from one viewing position to another inside the two smooth finished and painted white. These pristine environ­ studio rooms while Turrell opened and closed various win­ ments were ideal for exploring the spatial ramifications of dows and doors according to a set schema. the Projection Pieces and for constructing mock-ups of the The first parts of the Mendota Stoppages took place in Shallow-Space Constructions. The spaces were also sound the front space of the hotel. Dramatic and fairly large dampened and thus functioned as analogues for sensory amounts of light came into the interior, along with crisp deprivation chambers. In addition to providing anechoic shadows and prismatic patterns caused by colors being re­ sound spaces, the careful treatment of the walls, especially fracted by the glass in the windows. In these early stages, in low light conditions, was capable of producing Canz­ well-defined shapes and intense colors moved across the fe/d-quality visual fields. As Turrell puts it, the light would wall surfaces of the front room largely in response to the seem to "gel-up" inside the spaces.10 traffic stopping and going at the intersection of Hill and During this same period, beginning in late 1969 and Main. In the middle sections of the work, veils of light continuing into the early 1970s, Turrell also elaborated an generated by outside sources such as street lamps and ad­ interactive group of light images that became known as the vertising signs on adjacent buildings-6eemed to divide the Mendota Stoppages. The Mendota Stoppages were con­ second interior space along immaterial partitions. In the cerned with perception, but they had environmental char­ later stages of the work, also involving the innermost studio acteristics as well. They amounted to an interconnected, room, more and more subtle perceptual qualities were pre­ site-specific performance piece that was performed, not by sented to the audience and the light tended to remain sta­ actors, but by both stationary and moving light sources tionary. Some of the light qualities in the later parts of the available outside the hotel. The spaces inside the building performance were just at the edge of perceptual capacity, became Turrell's first "sensing spaces," and, as such, they and thus dark adaptation was an important component in acted like eyes or cameras. More particularly, they acted their perception. Near the end of the performance, the like a lensless camera obscura that focused abstract light amount of light inside the innermost studio space was so shapes onto interior surfaces. Turrell controlled the various small that it could hardly be seen at all and, in some cases, parameters of his architectural spaces the way photo­ was difficult to distinguish from the visual "noise" generated graphers and the early builders of the camera obscura con- within the visual system by random nerve firing.

23 Mendota Hotel, interior of the second studio space looking toward the door into the first studio space, c. 1970. Photo: James Turrell, courtesy of the Artist.

24 , [T'7 J!_-~I~ r - ,_ (,[~□ ;-J ~, - • I : • l :_~_J,.• _,- ial! .,.I •• 00 w _..,_ ____..L8 [D F-,_1 l, I ~ :1

_l V [[] Lt~·-J ~ I ~ J • , I I L ,oco· e111: ■ ■ - /

.. '

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James Turrell, Music for the Mendota: Mendota Stoppages, 1970-71. Ink on paper. Private Collection, New York. Photo: courtesy of the Artist.

25 James Turrell, Mendota Stoppages,1969. Black and white multiple exposure of stages 5 and 6. Private Collection, Pasadena, California. Photo: James Turrell, courtesy of the Artist.

26 James Turrell, Mendota Stoppages, 1969. Detail of stage 7. Photo: James Turrell, courtesy of the Artist.

27 James Turrell, Wedgework Ill, 1969. Fluorescent light, as installed at the Whitney Museum, 1980. Collection of the Artist. Photo: Warren Silverman, courtesy of the Artist.

28 WEDGEWORKS

In a series of works that developed out of the middle Wedgework Ill, for example, is created using a mix of stages of the Mendota Stoppages, Turrell created partitions blue and red fluorescent fixtures. These sources create of light that fell across the spaces of interior rooms. The shimmering colors that play across the apparent surface of Wedgeworks, as these immaterial screens of light are called the light division-a quality that changes and shifts depend­ and as their name implies, generate wedge-shaped subdivi­ ing on our position relative to it. The Wedgeworks divide sions along the diagonals of interior rooms. In addition to the three-dimensional viewing chamber into two separate being related to the middle sections of the Mendota Stop· spatial textures. Turrell explains that the "screen is per­ pages, the Wedgeworks can also be thought of as develop­ ceived as a transparent, filmy, glassy sui;face through which ing out of the Shallow-Space Constructions, particularly one looks into a space that appears white. The sheet of Ronin. If the partition wall like the one used in Ronin is white itself reveals various color differentiations from its placed further out into the space and the hidden fluorescent edges inward, depending on the mix of light behind the fixtures located at oblique angles to it, the light that enters partition wall. The colors seem to ride on the surface, out in the viewing space forms an insubstantial plane analogous to space and not in the space behind; that space is seen as light streaming through the cracks in an old barn or the white, made up of the mix of color." 11 These qualities de­ beams of light falling through the canopy of a forest except pend on such perceptual factors as surface color constancy that it is more crisply controlled. In the Wedgeworks, the in relation to the perception of illumination. These interac­ light has a geometric simplicity analogous to that used in tions are complex. They are also to some degree malleable the Projection Pieces and the Shallow-Space Constructions. and further depend on perceptual set and color after-im­ But the light, although it is geometrically simple, is also ages. It is particularly in these last terms that our movement quite subtle. relative to the partition of light affects what we see.

29 James Turrell, Lunette, 1974. Villa Panza, Varese, Italy. Interior neon/argon light and open sky. Photos: James Turrell, courtesy of the Artist.

30 STRUCTURALCUTS

During the years Turrell spent at the Mendota Hotel, he as being at the inside boundary of the room and thus explored various qualities of light, always endeavoring to enclosing the space rather than opening out from it. Yet, at find ways to incorporate what he learned into his work. the same time, the "surface" of the sky had a sense of Some of his most important approaches involved opening energy and a visual pregnance very distinct from an actual the building to artificial and natural light sources from the surface. Turrell explains that "the sense of closure at the exterior-street lamps, traffic signals, passing vehicles, and juncture appears to be a glassy film stretched across the the sun and moon. As we have seen, in the Mendota Stop­ opening, with an indefinable space beyond this trans­ pages, he created apertures that allowed light from such parency that changes with sky conditions and sun an­ sources into the interior of the building in controlled ways. gles."13 Many of the openings were oriented toward open sky, and Turrell constructed several other Structural Cuts in the in these terms, themselves created light qualities of special Mendota, one in the dining room, another in the corner of interest. Looking back out through the openings into the an upstairs room, but these were in place for only short sky, particularly on cloudless days, provided Turrell with a periods. Another was cut through the roof of the building means of locating light and color in open space. He could, and looked straight up into the sky. In all the Structural Cuts, in a sense, place pure light at the immaterial interface be­ the art became a matter of sculpting the light in the sky by tween two different volumes of space-one inside and the using the direct processes of perception. The color seen at other outside the building. the juncture between the interior and exterior spaces, the In a series of pieces known as Structural Cuts, Turrell density and "grain" seen through the apertures, depend on began to remove sections of the hotel's outside walls in outside conditions relative to the illumination inside the order to access the sky. One of the most important of these viewing room. Particularly during twilight transitions at apertures was the small Sky Window in the first studio space dawn or dusk, the color is enhanced and takes on intense used as a light opening in both the night and the day aspects shades of blue. At sunset, for example, the color ranges of the Mendota Stoppages. By focusing on the window itself through cerulean, ultramarine, dark-blue, and, finally as a work, we could look directly out into the empty sky­ when the sun has gone down, an impenetrable black. At although "out" is not exactly the right word. More accu­ sunrise, this order is reversed. The emjilty volumes inside rately, we looked "at" the sky as pure color. The roughly and outside the main chambers of the Structural Cuts are square opening (it was slightly higher than wide) caused the essentially balanced in relation to one another and the sky sky to be read as if it were flush with the opening, especially is perceived in terms of pure color. Turrell's first permanent when the interior and exterior luminance levels were work that functioned along these lines was Lunette, an in­ roughly equal. As Turrell explains it, "the front surface of stallation constructed in 1974 at Count Giuseppe Panza di the space outside is drawn up to the same plane as the wall Biumo's villa in Varese, Italy. As the title implies, the semi­ that is cut. The degree of transparency of the front surface circular cut replaces a lunette window at the end of a barrel and the color and grain of the space outside depend on the vaulted hallway. Interior ambient illumination is provided light quality of the interior space in relation to the light by hidden neon-argon tube lighting placed on top of a ledge quality of the space looked onto." 12 Because the edges of located at the springing of the barrel vault. Lambent I ight on the cut wedged down to a sharp border, the thickness of the the interior surfaces, particularly the intrados of the vault, walls could not be seen and the apparent surface was read enhances the color seen at the opening.

31 James Turrell, Skyspace I, 1975. Villa Panza, Varese, Italy. Interior neon/argon light and open sky. Photo: James Turrell, courtesy of the Artist.

32 SKYSPACES

The Skyspaces are directly related to the Structural does in Lunette next door. The rapid changes visible at sun­ Cuts. In particular, they develop out of the temporary aper­ rise or sunset seem to occur in Lunette just before or just ture cut through the roof of the Mendota. As is true of the after, respectively, they occur in Skyspace I. The colors in Structural Cuts, one of the most important aspects of the the adjacent installations can sometimes be quite distinct. Skyspaces is that they occur over time. In this sense, they Particularly if cloud conditions are propitious, the color in are also analogous to the Mendota Swppages. They are Lunette can respond to the sunset or sunrise and be very performance pieces that happen in response to changing pink, but more typically, it ranges through deep blue tones conditions around them. Seeing a Skyspace requires at least as does Skyspace I. The basic concept of the Skyspace has two hours at sunrise or sunset-a statement not meant to not changed since the first such work was installed at suggest that these works are uninteresting at other times of Panza's villa, but in several more recent variations, Turrell day or night. They interact with multiple conditions of at­ has modified specific parameters involving the arrangement mosphere throughout any given 24-hour period and are of the viewing space and the type and placement of the further complicated by changing sun angles throughout any interior illumination. In 1980, he began a large Skyspace on given year. Seeing a Skyspace thus requires patience. Under the top floor of P.S. 1 in Queens, New York, but, due to the special conditions of the Skyspace-our being inside a construction delays, it was not completed until 1986. The pristine, severely rectilinear space-looking at the color of disposition of this work, entitled Meeting, is similar to Sky­ the sky slowly changing and becoming highly amplified is space I but is more cubical, measuring approximately an engaging experience. The empty space provides us with 18 x 18 x 18 feet. In Meeting, benches run around the inside an opportunity for concentrating directly on the workings of walls of the viewing space, and the inside illumination is our own seeing. provided by Os ram I in ear tungsten fixtures- long tubes that In 1975, Turrell was offered his first opportunity to resemble clear fluorescents-placed at the top of the high, create a permanent Skyspace, again at Panza's villa in 6 feet 6 inch backs of the benches. The light sources are not Varese. Skyspace I, as this work is called, is built inside a visible from a standing position inside tl'leviewing room. In chamber just next door to Lunette. Skyspace / looks directly 1986, Turrell constructed a similar Skyspace for the one­ up into the sky. It has a 12 x 12 foot floor plan and is approx­ year inaugural exhibition of the Museum of Contemporary imately twice as high as it is wide. An eight-foot square Art in Los Angeles. This piece was constructed inside a opening is cut through the ceiling overhead and is sur­ small building, formerly a gas station, next to the ware­ rounded by a two-foot margin on all sides. As in other such house space of the museum in downtown Los Angeles (the apertures, the inside boundary of the opening comes to a former "Temporary Contemporary"). Each of Turrell's Sky­ sharp edge. Illumination inside the lower viewing chamber spaces differs in its perceptual nuance depending on its is provided by tube lighting that is hidden from view inside location. They all function in terms of focusing our attention a recession that curves up under the walls at floor level. The on the act of seeing. There is a certain frankness about any glow of light that bounces up from the floor and plays across particular Skyspace and its approach to light that takes us the interior walls and the margin surrounding the opening directly to our perceptual situation. We see without being overhead enhances the perceived color of the sky just as it distracted by anything (any thing).

33 Villa Panza, Varese, Italy. Photo: Craig Adcock.

34 Vil la Panza, Varese, Italy. View showing exterior shutter used to close Lunette and sliding roof used to close Skyspace I. Photo: Craig Adcock.

35 James Turrell, Meeting, 1980-86. Permanent Installation, P.S.1, Queens, New York. Interior tungsten light and open sky, views at sunset. Photos: John Cliett, courtesy of the Artist.

6 ""

37 ·----•=-···••iiiiiiii ...... - ----·-···- .. ------==!! -----~!!!!!!!!!_----~------··-

James Turrell, Second Meeting, exterior view, 1986. Temporary installation, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Interior tungsten light and open sky. Private Collection, Los Angeles. Photo: James Turrell, courtesy of the Artist.

James Turrell, Second Meeting, detail of entrance, 1986. Photo: James Turrell, courtesy of the Artist.

38 James Turrell, Second Meeting, Plan and Section, 1986. Temporary installation, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California. Interior tungsten light and open sky. Private Collection, Los Angeles. Photo: courtesy of the Artist.

39 James Turrell, City of Arhiril, 1976. Filtered ambient sunlight, as installed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980. Collection of the Artist. Photo: John Cliett, courtesy of the Artist.

40 CANZFELD PIECES

Among the first perceptual circumstances that Turrell had just seen. This kind of response is explained by Turrell: considered for incorporation into his work was the "Each room was lit by outside light that entered through a Canzfeld. He had studied such visual fields while still an small window behind the viewer. The light was controlled undergraduate at Pomona College and had also generated in passing through this window so as to create a homoge­ them at the Mendota simply through the careful treatment neous field of pale color in each of the rooms. Because the of the wall surfaces inside his studio spaces. He had further light outside determined the quality of light in the rooms, speculated about using them in the proposed project for the the interior light varied according to the time of day, the day Art and Technology Program, but he did not actually have of the year, and the atmospheric conditions. Not only did an opportunity to exhibit such works until 1976. For his the intensity in each of the rooms vary with outside light exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam that year, changes (perhaps a cloud passing overhead), but the color he created the City of Arhirit, a series of four linked cham­ itself appeared to be constantly in flux. As in a normal bers that made use of homogeneous visual fields. The homogeneous field, color begins to fade after a few minutes room-sized spaces opened off the side of a narrow passage, of viewing. In moving from one space to the next, the reti­ and, from positions along this passageway, each room nal afterimage of the previous room was mixed with the seemed to be filled with a haze of light. The floors, ceilings, color present in the new space."14 and walls of the chambers were covered with dry wall and As first installed, the floor of the passageway in the City then finished with smooth plaster and painted white. As had of Arhirit was covered with dry wall and painted white as happened in the comparable viewing conditions of the were all the other surfaces in the linked chambers, but a Mendota studio spaces, the light itself seemed to "gel up." number of viewers became disoriented inside the work. The ambient illumination seemed to fill the space with an Because of this exhibition difficulty, a path was cut through almost physical pressure. The natural light used to power the sheet rock back down to the original;:>arquet floor of the the City of Arhirit entered the chambers from baffled win­ museum, and, although this configuration did not provide dows high on the wall opposite the interior spaces. The so all-encompassing a light experience, viewers then had a Canzfelds created in the chambers by th is I ight were subtle visible surface to follow through the sequence of spaces. and depended on the color of the surfaces outside the bu ii d­ One chamber of the City of Arhirit was reconstructed for ing that reflected the light. One chamber received a slightly Turrell's exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art in 1980, green colored light because it came off a lawn; another and it too confused some viewers. Several museum visitors received a slightly red colored light because it came off an actually fell into the space. Apparently they assumed that exterior brick wall. These parameters were further compli­ the piece consisted of the window high on the wall opposite cated by such factors as outside cloud cover and sun angles. the space holding the Canzfeld. They took the dense lead­ Moreover, the way viewers perceived the color of the light ing edge of the light to be a solid surface, loo~ed up at the inside a given Canzfeld space depended on their entry into window while leaning back on what they thought was a it. Perception of one quality could be changed by what they wall, and tumbled into the chamber.

41 James Turrell, Laar, 1976. Ambient tungsten light, as installed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980. Collection: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Photo: Warren Silverman, courtesy of the Artist.

42 SPACE-DIVISION PIECES

Turrell designed a series of variations on the Canzfeld color will seem to ride on the grain seen in the sensing approach to light in 1976 soon after completing the City of space."15 Arhirit. The Space-Division pieces, as these works are In a discussion of //tar,one of the works from the Prado called, also create homogeneous visual fields by using Series first constructed at the University of Arizona Museum smooth white walls, but instead of having one completely of Art in 1980 and then reconstructed at the Center on open end, they are equipped with a partition wall with a Contemporary Art in Seattle in 1982, Turrell elaborates large aperture cut through it. This arrangement was de­ about how the light inside the sensing space functions and signed in part to accommodate exhibition situations where explains· that designing such works is analogous to tuning a it was difficult to allow viewers to actually enter the light musical instrument: "Some of [the Space-Division Pieces] sensitive chamber. From a distance, the different qualities of actually are tuned and some of them I know enough about light in the two spaces-the outer viewing room and the that I don't really do that. But occasionally I've had to move interior sensing space-make light visible as a substantive the walls, because they didn't 'work.' I mean, when they layer seemingly stretched across the aperture. When we don't work, when you made [the piece], it would just be an enter the dimly lit outer room, we see what appears to be a empty room. The fact of the matter is that in //tar, for in­ flat panel hanging on the far wall. Canister track lighting stance, the room isn't empty, and there's something in shines dim illumination on the side walls of the space just there-a quality of light that's very different than the quality out from the edges of the aperture. As we approach the of light that's in the room you inhabit. And that something opening, the "panel" reveals itself to be a space filled with comes by virtue of having the space sized in relationship to light. Even up close, the "surface" retains its position. In­ the light that enters it. That si.zing isn't always easily predict­ deed, some viewers fail to realize there is a space beyond able, so I've actually had to move walls and change pieces the opening just as some viewers of the City of Arhirit saw a to get it to do that sometimes. So that's sort of the 'tuning.' I wall surface instead of a Canzfeld. have these sheet-rock rollers that you can slip underneath In the Space-Division Pieces Turrell designed in 1976, the wall and actually move it back and forth if you haven't known as the Prado Series, the position of the partition wal I tightened it down yet.''16 The light inside. the sensing space and the size of the aperture varies according to a set system of a Space-Division Piece is in many ways comparable to involving the depth of the sensing space and the size of the that seen through the opening of a Skypiece. Both present aperture. The individual works create different qualities of light in homogeneous visual modes. The light seen through space and surface depending on how they reveal these the aperture of a Skyspace, particularly on a cloudless day, basic components. Turrell explains: "The tone of the light is essentially a Canzfeld. As in a Space-Division Piece, the comes totally from the space outside of it, and the space color seems to ride on an immaterial plane between a space itself is painted a pure titanium white. This is done to make that we occupy and a space that is exterior to us. The color the space totally reflective of the I ight tone which enters it. at the opening evolves over time. In the Space-Division The space must be painted white, for if the walls are painted Pieces, the changes are engendered by our movement in any color, the color seems to ride on the walls and not in the relation to the opening; in the Skyspaces, we remain sta­ air. However, if the space is painted white, and the color tionary, and the changes are engendered by the movement arrives as ambient light from the space outside, then the of the sun.

43 James Turrell, I/tar, 1976. Turrell in front of the 6½' x 19' aperture of //tar prior to the completion at the Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, 1982. Photo: Colleen Chartier, courtesy of the Artist.

44 James Turrell, //tar, 1976. Ambient tungsten light, as installed at the Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, 1982. Private Collection, Milan. Photo: Steven J. Young, courtesy of the Artist.

45 James Turrell, Amba, 1982. Fluorescent and ultraviolet light, as installed at the Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, 1982. Collection of the Artist. Photo: Steven J. Young, courtesy of the Artist.

46 MIXED-LIGHT WORKS

In a number of works closely related to the Canzfeld by both ambient light provided by track I ighting outside the installations and the Space-Division Pieces, Turrell has sensing space and by hidden fluorescent sources inside the mixed different kinds of illumination inside his sensing sensing space arranged much like those used in Amba. As spaces. One of the most dramatic of these mixed-light in the Space-Division Pieces, the sensing spaces of these works is Amba constructed at the Center on Contemporary works need to resonate with the light they contain, but the Art in Seattle in 1982. In this installation, structural piers in process is complicated by having to balance both the am­ the building necessitated a tripartite division of the aper­ bient light and the direct light from the fluorescents. In ture. Hidden fluorescent sources were then recessed into works such as At/an, a work first constructed at the Univer­ the margins of the openings and the piers inside the sensing sity of Arizona Museum of Art in 1986, and now in the space. Blue fluorescents were placed on one side and red Collection of the Musee d'art conte~orain in Montreal, on the other; ultraviolet sources ran horizontally along the Turrell carefully adjusts the rheostats that control the interior top and bottom of the openings and vertically on the inside black light in relation to the tungsten light that reflects into of the columns. This light had a tendency to gel-up in a the sensing space. At low wattage, the fluorescent lamps manner similar to that in a Space-Division Piece. It too put out a violet glow that mixes with the grey-green ambient seemed particulate, as if it consisted of red dust toward one light creating a Canzfeld consisting of a purple-blue haze. end and blue dust toward the other. In the middle, the Such mixed-light works are similar to Space-Division colors both mixed together and retained their individual Pieces. As we approach the "surface" at the opening, the grains. Each color seemed to reverberate with the non-spe­ color shifts. As we begin to see the corners of the inner cific energy of the black light. room, subtly at first, still lost in the haze of light, the space Turrell has also created a series of mixed-light works opens up, but it never empties. As we come up to the edge that are more directly related to the Space-Division Pieces. of the opening, the light comes up to the edge of our per­ These works have sharp-edged apertures and are powered ception.

47 JamesTurrell, At/an, 1986. Ambient tungsten and ultraviolet light, as installed at the University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, 1986. Collection Musee d'art contemporain, Montreal. Photos: Craig Adcock.

48 49 49 James Turrell, Pleiades, 1983. Low-wattage tungsten projection. Permanent installation, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh. Photo: courtesy of the Artist.

52 DARK PIECES

During the 1980s, Turrell has created a series of Dark arrangement of the work. The light we see is actually cre­ Pieces, works that develop in conceptual terms out of the ated by a very low-wattage projection on the end wall of the last stages of the Mendota Stoppages. Because the Dark space. The projection is sized with the Purkinje Shift in Pieces require our adapting to very low light levels, they put mind. By surrounding a dim area of blue light with a dim us into a state of receptivity in which we can, in almost area of red light, the image when focused onto the retinas literal terms, concentrate on the inner workings of our own by the corneas and lens systems of the eyes subtends the visual systems. The qualities of light that become available foveae. In other words, the juncture of blue and red just with fully adapted vision seem to intensify the act of seeing. about overlaps the margin between the areas of the retinas Dark adaptation requires at least twenty to thirty minutes that are rich in cones and those that are rich in rods. The and in some circumstances up to an hour. As the retinas overlap increases our perception of changes taking place at adapt, maximum sensitivity shifts from cones to rods, from entoptic levels. In Pleiades, we move from a situation where photopic to scotopic vision. In Pleiades, a Dark Piece per­ with unadapted eyes we see nothing at all save our own manently installed at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh in systems, through intermediate perceptual states where in­ 1983, we enter a small chamber by feeling our way along a trinsic light cannot be distinguished from extrinsic light, to a handrail through a narrow corridor that acts as a light trap. situation where our fully adapted eyes can determine that From a position behind a waist-high partition, we sit or there is definitely an area of light out there, although it stand and wait for something to happen. In the beginning, remains indistinct. Looking at virtually nothing for a long we cannot see our hands in front of our faces, and we have period is an uncommon art experience, but what happens is no real sense of the chamber's actual configuration. Gradu­ of considerable interest. Our increasea visual awareness ally, dim areas of luminance seem to become perceptible makes threshold light perceptible, and we see things that and to move through the space, but these are often phos­ are barely visible. Some of these things are within our­ phenes generated by the random nerve firing inside our selves. By focusing on the fundamental aspects of vision, own retinas. But through time, Pleiades begins to turn on: at we virtually see our own rods firing and sense the molecular first, it seems that a small globular area with a slightly red­ transformations taking place in our own rhodopsin. We lit­ dish cast is hanging out in the space before us. Then, the erally perceive events engendered by just a few photons of color becomes more blue, and the red moves toward the light. Such perception is difficult to explain. The light is edges of the globular shape. The intensification reflects the there and in no way indefinite. Indeed, in some ways, it is Purkinje Shift, the change in maximum color sensitivity more definite than the light of normal experiei:ice. Rather some 60 nanometers toward the blue that accompanies our than being illumination on something else, the light has its switching from photopic to scotopic vision. Turrell has fur­ own place, and although it hardly exists at all, it possesses ther enhanced our experience of this phenomenon by his great intensity. We see light as light.

53 James Turrell, Aerial View of Roden Crater from the Southeast. Photo: James Turrell, courtesy of the Artist.

54 THE RODEN CRATERPROJECT

In 1975, Turrell lost his studio in the Mendota Hotel. The approaches Turrell takes to light and space in his This event was an inconvenience, particularly since he had exhibited works are the same as those planned for the spent a great deal of effort transforming the studio rooms to crater. Indeed, many of his most recent works are concep­ meet his special needs, but it did provide him with an tualized as studies for the crater project, particularly the impetus for beginning a work that he had been thinking aperture pieces, the dark pieces, and the Skyspaces. He about since the early 1970s, namely, the construction of a plans to reshape the top of the crater by transforming it into large outdoor sculpture that would shape the visual phe­ a hemispherical dish with a rim all at one height. The modi­ nomena of celestial vaulting and the related concave earth fied bowl will function as a huge Skyspace and manipulate illusion. These perceptual impressions are explained in a the phenomenon of celestial vaulting. In addition to reshap­ book that Turrell admires, Marcel Minnaert's The Nature of ing the crater bowl, he wi II construct a number of under­ Light and Color in the Open Air: "When we survey the sky ground chambers inside the mountain. These interior from the open fields, the space above us does not generally spaces wi II house Iight scu Iptures engendered by natural give us the impression of being infinite, nor of being a illumination. The carefully prepared chambers will be con­ hollow hemisphere spanning the earth. It resembles, rather, structed using natural materials from the site and nearby a vault whose altitude above our heads is less than the desert and, in terms of treatment, will be analogous to the distance from ourselves to the horizon. It is an impression pristine rooms that house his gallery and museum installa­ and not more than that, but for most of us a very convincing tions. The chambers at the crater will be animated by light one, so that its explanation must be psychological and not images and light atmospheres, but the natural processesthat physical." A little further on, he explains the concave earth power them will be complex and ever changing. As the illusion, pointing out that it "is the counterpart of the visual principal sources for his light-the sun:,moon, and stars­ impression made by the vault of the sky. When the air is move through the sky, the sculptural spaces inside the clear the earth surveyed from a balloon appears to curve cinder cone will respond. Sometimes they will evolve upwards so that we seem to be floating above a huge con­ slowly over long periods of time, sometimes they will take cave plate." 17 From his experiences as a pilot, Turrell had on radically different form in a matter of moments. often confirmed Minnaert's observations, and he wanted to At diametrical positions near the edge of a lava cliff that incorporate such visual phenomena into an outdoor light fans out around the fumarole, or secondary vent, on the and space work. After making an aerial survey of the west­ northeastern flank of the crater, four underground chambers ern United States during a seven month period in 1975, will be oriented toward the cardinal directions. From a Turrell chose Roden Crater, a cinder cone on the eastern position near the eastern space, a combined ramp and shal­ edge of the San Francisco volcanic plateau, as an ideal low stairway will lead up to the top of the fumarole. At the location for engendering the multiple visual phenomena he fumarole, another series of interior spaces will become was after. available. Turrell explains that these linked sculptural rooms

55 Full Site Plan with Survey Net, 1987. Photo emulsion, wax, acrylic, ink, on mylar and vellum, 79" x 45". Collection: Daniel and Rotraut Moquay. Photo: Bill Langford, Florida State University.

56 JamesTurrell, Fumerole with Cardinal Spaces, 1986. Photo emulsion on wax and mylar with ink paint and wax pastels, 32" x 40". Photo: John Abbott, courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery.

57 Construction photograph of the aperture used in //tar, 1976, as installed at the University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, 1980. Photo: James Turrell, courtesy of the Artist. The aperture was subsequently reused in the construction of A/tan, 1986.

50 Installation view of At/an, 1986. University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson. Photo: Dick Wiser, courtesy of the Artist.

51 James Turrell, General Site Plan, Roden Crater, 1986. Installation view, Kunsthalle, Basel, Switzerland, May, 1987. Photo emulsion on wax and mylar with ink paint and wax pastels, 9 x 27 feet (overall). Collection: The Lannan Foundation. Photo: James Turrell, courtesy of the Lannan Foundation.

Installation view of Roden Crater Site Plan and Model, 1985, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California. Photo: James Turrel I, courtesy of the Artist. "will have spaces that you can enter into as well as look for example, a space inhabited by a Canzfeld receives a into. When you look back, the space you have just left will discrete light image-say a bright rectangle similar to a be altered and charged by the juxtaposition." 18 A tunnel, Single-Wall Projection created when the sun crosses an ap­ 1,035 feet long, will lead up from the fumarole to the inside erture-the event will cause the mist of light to collapse and of the crater bowl. At the top of the tunnel, we will come the space itself to take on a very different perceptual ar­ out into an ova I chamber that wi 11function Ii ke a Skyspace. rangement. Such shifting interior light performances are As we step up stairs and come out into the crater bowl, the only part of the crater's program. Not only will we be able sky will balloon upward and seem to attach itself to the rim to see the interior volumes and their architecturally defined of the crater. It will become a shallow celestial vault with a light images evolve under constantly changing conditions, diameter of some 3,000 feet. As we then walk up from the we will also be able to turn our attention outward to the bottom of the bowl to the upper margin of the crater, the sky celestial objects that are the sources for these interior visual will detach itself from the rim and seem to spring outward to qua I ities and events. the far horizon, creating a much larger vault stretching from The astronomical plans for Roden Crater are intricate horizon to horizon sixty to one-hundred miles away de­ and are suggested in the drawings, prints, and models that pending on the direction. Similar dramatic disclosures will Turrell has created for the project. The movements of the be effected by comparable tunnel spaces and chambers on sun, the moon, and the stars have cycles with comprehensi­ the western side of the crater. ble temporal periods familiar to everyone. Turrell will use Turrell emphasizes that he wants to work in phase with their movements-and far more subtle rhythms as well-in the natural environment, and when construction is com­ the alignments he plans for his underground spaces. The pleted, the crater will be carefully returned to its original objects themselves-sometimes as bright as the sun and condition, and we will have difficulty ascertaining that any­ sometimes as subtle as a single star-will give the light thing was ever done to the site. The openings of the archi­ events at the crater range and scope. The project's greatest tectural spaces will be located amid natural outcroppings of reach will be into the immensity of the cosmos itself. Roden rock when possible, and the crater bowl will be replanted Crater will place us within the context of the universe. The with the vegetation originally growing there. Turrell likens aesthetic focus of the work is directly related to astronomy, his physical alterations of the crater to the kind of Japanese what is perhaps the quintessential science of light. What we gardening where distinguishing between the hand of man know of the universe, and its space, is revealed to us in the and the natural environment is both difficult and unneces­ information carried to us across time by light. The chambers sary. The Roden Crater Project relates to its site in mean­ and alignments planned for Roden Crater are also related to ingful ways, indeed, it virtually is the site. The work thus archaeoastronomy, and, at these more poetic levels, the meets one of the aesthetic criteria that can reasonably be project partakes of very ancient cultural traditions: humans expected of large-scale sculptures-namely, that they be have been organizing their buildings in relation to the sky site-specific. At Roden Crater, the art is fundamentally tied for thousands of years. The cycles of the heavens can ce to the volcano as a natural entity. The mass:ve cinder cone used to measure time, and they have been so used as a is itself an impressive object, but Turrell's art will incorpo­ model for daily life, for planning and prediction, at sites all rate complex intellectual pattern into its already command­ over the world. At Roden Crater, the most direct link with ing presence. The natural beauty of light used as sculptural such ancient astronomical practice is provided by structures material will ·be conjoined with the physical power and built by the Sinagua Indians and their near neighbors, the spatial amplitude of the desert landscape. Turrell's interac­ Anasazi, who lived to the east in what is now New Mexico. tive approach to light and his attention to the site-specific Roden Crater is located amid numerous Indian ruins. A few relationships of interior and exterior spaces have been fun­ miles to the northwest is Wupatki National Monument damental to his art since at least the period when he was where substantial dwellings are preserved. These buildings working on the Mendota Stoppages. At the crater, Structural were constructed in the 12th century using techniques Cuts similar to those used in the studio spaces of the old likely introduced to the Sinagua by the Anasazi. hotel will be related to external light events such as sunrises At Wupatki there are also ball courts-something or sunsets, and Skyspaces will enframe ambient phe­ which may indicate that communication links existing be­ nomena in the constantly changing sky overhead. tween the Sinagua and the peoples of Mexico and Central The complexities of light and space available at the America. Such interconnections are at least metaphorically crater will be further compounded by periodic astronomical relevant to the ideas behind the Roden Crater Project and image events. In these terms, the project will not only func­ their relationships to the rich archaeoastronomical tradi­ tion as an interactive light environment descended from the tions of both the Southwest and Mesa-America. In the Casa Mendota Stoppages, but also as a naked-eye observatory. Rinconada, for example, a kiva built by the Anasazi at When an image is focused by an aperture into a space, it Chaco Canyon, an opening oriented toward the northeast will alter the light atmosphere hanging inside that space; allowed light to come into the sacred interior space and the light coming through the sharp edges of the opening will illuminate a specific niche in the west wall when the sun cause one quality to disappear, while creating another. If, reached the summer solstice and rose furthest north on the

59 View of Roden Crater from the Southwest, Summer Solstice, 1988. Photo: Craig Adcock.

60 View of Roden Crater from the Southeast, 1986. Photo: Craig Adcock.

61 James Turrell, T-72 Triptych with Reshaped Craterand Port, 1983. Emulsion, vellum, wax pastel, ink, and graphite on mylar, 40½ x 131 inches overall. Collection: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Gift of Sydney Goldfarb. Photo: courtesy of the Artist.

62 horizon. In Mayan architecture, similar events marked the The orientations of various other crater spaces and their solstices and equinoxes. At Alta Vista in northern Mexico, particular natural locations on the volcano will allow subtle for example, structural arrangements allowed beams of and rare visual phenomena to apprise us of the beauty of light from the sunrise to penetrate back into the enclosed light. Such revelations will work in both framed and un­ spaces of a building known as the Hall of Columns at the framed terms. In other words, we will be able to look at time of the equinoxes. In comparable ways, light events will natural phenomena from positions outside on the flanks of periodically penetrate back into the interior spaces of the volcano or experience them in abstracted form inside a Roden Crater. given space. The interrelated interior and exterior spaces at At the solstices and equinoxes, light will be able to Roden Crater will not only work in conjunction with one reach certain areas of the interior spaces. Thus, the light another, but also in conjunction with the states of the out­ will operate not only in terms of the sun's position in its side atmosphere and ground cover as the days and the sea­ daily arc across the sky but also according to the position of sons change. These complex visual parameters will allow that arc relative to the seasonal shifts in the ecliptic. More us to modify our own perceptual expectancies by changing subtle rhythms will also be part of the crater's astronomical our position on the mountain, and, when such factors as pattern. The oscillation of the sun is mimicked by the moon adaptation, afterimage, simultaneous and successive con­ every month, but in a way made complex by the preces­ trast, and perceptual set are combined with the constantly sion, or more accurately, the regression of the nodes of its evolving light conditions of the natural environment, the orbit. The moon's orbital wobble makes its major standstills visual range of the site will become virtually infinite. operate according to an 18.61 year cycle. In naked-eye The interior chambers at Roden Crater will provide us observational terms, the moon can rise and set outside and with colors as striking as those engendered by urban Sky­ inside the extreme positions of the sun. This movement was spaces such as Meeting and Second Meeting, but because apparently observed by ancient watchers of the sky and they use only natural light, they will perhaps work more in incorporated as pattern into the measuring capacities of terms of Turrell's interest in having the hand of man blend their structures. Stonehenge is perhaps the most famous imperceptibly into the environment. The crater Skyspaces example of such a monument. and Structural Cuts will retain a relationship with the hues One of the principal spaces planned for the crater is the that are already in the surrounding desert. A major compo­ tunnel linking the chambers at the fumarole with the main nent of what now powers an urban Skyspace or what will bowl of the crater. This tunnel will be aligned along the axis eventually power the spaces at the crater is available at all of the southernmost moonset and the northernmost sunrise. times, anywhere, namely, the color of the sky. Turrell's use Every 18.61 years, when the moon is at its southernmost of this color is both straightforward and complex: on one declination, it will appear at the end of the tunnel. For level, he has chosen a rich body of natural phenomena and several days each month for several months that year, the incorporated it into his art, and, on another, he has trans­ moon will cross directly in front of the opening. As it oc­ formed nature through his art. Turrell explains how he cludes the aperture, its image will be projected down the wants his art to interface the natural world: "My desire is to tunnel and onto a wall inside the innermost fumarole space set up a situation to which I take you and let you see. It according to the principles of the pinhole camera. In the becomes your experience. I am doing that at Roden Crater. opposite direction, the axis will point toward the more ap­ It's not taking from nature as much as placing you in contact parent pattern of the sunrise at summer solstice. Every year, with it." 19 The completed crater project will provide us with the intense light of the rising sun will fall on the opposite rich manifolds of experience. The colors available in the side of the wall that receives the image of the moon every desert sky are unbelievable in and of themselves. At the 18.61 years. An appreciation of the long period of the crater, they will be enhanced by a kind of architecture that, moon's regression and the geometry involved in its move­ in almost literal terms, possessesvision. As Turrell puts it, ment is perhaps as much conceptual as it is perceptual. "Roden Crater has knowledge in it, and it does something Only a few of the tunnel image events will be visible in any with that knowledge. Environmental events occur; a space given lifetime. Still, even longer cycles will be encom­ lights up. Something happens in there, for a moment, or for passed by the crater. One of its alignments in the north a time. It is an eye, something that is itself perceiving. It is a space located at the edge of the lava scarp will indicate the piece that does not end. It is changed by the action of the gradual succession of pole stars. The axis of the earth slowly sun, the moon, the cloud cover, by the day and the season precesses, the same kind of wobble as that involved in the that you're there ... and it keeps changing. When you're regression of the moon's orbit, but, unlike the relatively there, it has visions, qualities, and a universe of pos­ brief 18.61 year period of the lunar cycle, the precession of sibilities."20 the equinoxes requires 25,800 years. Depending on the ·Roden Crater will order basic human interactions with Earth's position in the cycle, the pole sometimes points to­ light and space-and also with time. It will affect not only ward prominent stars in the northern sky such as Thuban, as the intensity, but also the protensity-the extension through it did 5,000 years ago, Polaris, as it does now, or Vega, as it time-of perceptual experience. The modifications to the will 12,000 years in the future. cinder cone will be informed by the works Turrell has been

63 James Turrell, Model of Roden Crater, 1987. Collection of the Artist. Photo: Dick Wiser, courtesy of the Artist.

64 JamesTurrell, Crater Site Plan with Survey Net, 1986. Photo emulsion on wax and mylar with ink, paint and wax pastels; two panels: A (top) 32¼" x 71¼"; B (bottom) 24¼" x 7l3/s". Collection: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo: Myles Aronowitz, courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum.

producing since the beginning of his career: the light inside designed to work closely with what is already available in the spaces will be like the Projection Pieces, the Shallow­ the sky, but it goes beyond worldly givens into areas of Space Constructions, the Wedgeworks, the Skyspaces, the autonomous, unbounded seeing. The sunrise and the sun­ Structural Cuts, the Space-Division Pieces, the Dark Pieces, set can range from a bright orange glow at the horizon set the Mixed-Light Works, but they will be hewn from the against a dark background of sky and earth through all the natural materials of the volcano and surfaced with the sands ambers, salmon pinks, silver yellows, purples and reds fa­ and stones of the surrounding desert. miliar to anyone who has ever watched a morning or an Turrell's Roden Crater Project is an interactive sculp­ evening. These displays are pure acts of nature. Their isola­ tural environment; its subject matter is light and space. The tion and intensification in the spaces Turrell has planned for way this subject matter is engaged both on the exterior and the Roden Crater Project are pure acts of art, and they in the interior of the ancient cinder cone engenders con­ fundamentally change our-perception of sky color. They templation. At its most profound levels, the completed pro­ collapse the familiar cliches so often useti to describe beau­ ject will allow us to stand in the present and look into both tiful twilights. As Turrell puts it, the light has its own ineffa­ the past and the future. Light, in one of its aspects, is time. ble quality: "What takes place while looking at the light in a The crater will focus our attention on infinite reaches that Skyspace is akin to wordless thought. But this thought is not are both geologic and astronomical, both personal and psy­ at all unthinking or without intelligence. It's just that it has a chological. The entire project with its myriad interior and different return than words." 21 Turrell's distant images-the exterior spaces functions in terms of the light in the sky. Day far patterns of the moon's regression, the precession of the begins approximately an hour before the sun comes up; equinoxes, and the light atmospheres they will engender­ light continues to illuminate the sky for an hour after the sun are part of the intellectual design of the Roden Crater Pro­ has gone down. As the day progresses, the atmosphere gets ject. It is a place where artificial spaces merge with nature more or less colorful, and the openings and the spaces and art melds with the affective spaces of individual con­ contained within the crater respond by producing colors sciousness. never seen in nature alone. In these terms, the crater is

65 - DEEP SKY

Night view of Roden Crater from the Southwest.

66 Sunrise through the lower aperture of the East Space, Esplanade level, Roden Crater.

Sun powered Wedgework at the back of the East Space, Roden Crater.

67 Schematic cross-section of the East Space, Roden Crater.

Schematic superimposed plan and section of the East Space, Roden Crater.

68 Schematic superimposed plan and section of the West Space, Roden Crater.

Reshaped Crater Bowl and aperture of upper tunnel space, Roden Crater.

69 MAPPING SPACES

James Turrell, Crater Bowl/Cross Section, 1988. Etching, aquatint, photo-etching, 22" x 30¾". Courtesy of Peter Blum Edition, New York. Photo: Zindman/Fremont.

70 James Turrell, East Chamber, 1988. Etching, aquatint, photo-etching, 22" x 30¼". Courtesy of Peter B!,!.!mEdition, New York. Photo: Zindman/Fremont.

71 James Turrell, North Chamber, 1987. Etching, aquatint, photo-etching, 22" x 30¼". Courtesy of Peter Blum Edition, New York. Photo: Zindman/Fremont.

72 James Turrell, West Chamber, 1987. Etching, aquatint, photo-etching, 22" x 30¼". Courtesy of PeterJ3Ium Edition, New York. Photo: Zindman/Fremont.

73 James Turrell, Fumerole, 1987. Etching, aquatint, photo-etching, 22" x 303/,.". Courtesy of Peter Blum Edition, New York. Photo: Zindman/Fremont.

74 NOTES

1Michael I. Sobel, Light (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 1. 2Turrell interviewed by Julia-Brown in Occluded Front, James Turrell (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art and The Lapis Press, 1986), pp. 42-43. 3Jane Livingston, "Robert Irwin/James Turrell," in Art & Technology: A Report on the Art & Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art 1967-1971, ed. Maurice Tuchman (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Mu­ seum of Art; New York: Viking Press, 1971), p. 127. 4 Turrell in James Turrell: Light & Space (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980), p. 15. STurrell interviewed by Richard Andrews in James Tur­ rell: Four Light Installations (Seattle: Center on Contempo­ rary Art and The Real Comet Press, 1982), p. 10'. 6Turrell in James Turrell: Light & Space, p. 15. 11bid., p. 17. a1bid., p. 20. 9Turrell quoted by Edy de Wilde in Jim Turrell (Amster- dam: Stedelijk Museum, 1976), n.p. 1DAuthor's conversations with Turrell, November 1986. 11Turrell in James Turrell: Light & Space, p. 25. 121bid., p. 33. 131bid. 14 1bid., p. 36 1s1bid., pp. 35-36. 16Turrell interviewed by Andrews in James Turrell: Four Light Installations, pp. 13-14. 17Marcel Minnaert, The Nature of Light and Color in the Open Air, trans. H.M. Kremer-Priest, rev. K.E. Brian Jay (New York: Dover, 1954), pp. 153-54. 1BTurrell interviewed by Pamela Hammond, "James Turrell, Light Itself," Images & Issues, 3 (Summer 1982), p. 55. 19Turrell interviewed by Julia Brown in Occluded Front: James Turrell, p. 22. 20Turrell interviewed by Keith M. McDonald, "The Roden Crater Project," Sedona Life, 4 Uanuary 1979), p. 47. 21Turrell interviewed by Miguel Baltierra, "Second Meeting: Turrell Embraces the Sky," L.A. Architect, Sep­ tember 1987, p. 6. ...

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