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Beginning in 1966 with the seminal piece Afrum-Proto,
which used quartz halogen projection to cause a seemingly 3-dimensional
cube to appear in the corner of a dark room, James Turrell has
been creating powerful works that dazzle and stupefy viewers.
For over four decades, Turrell has sought out new frontiers in
the treatment and use of the materials of light that combine light,
dark, perception and situation. Initially working with natural
light and forms of projection, Turrell has since expanded his
practice to include media such as large-scale Land art, minimal
constructs that merge sculpture and architecture and holography.
In the same year that Afrum-Proto
was completed, Turrell purchased the Mendota Block, a site in
Ocean Park, California that had formerly been a hotel. Turrell
proceeded to augment sections of this building through the construction
of additional walls, smoothly plastering surfaces and painting
entire rooms (floors included) a stark white.(1)
Turrell used meticulously carved-out holes in the walls of the
hotel and projection techniques to create poetic light-forms that
at times took on multi-dimensional qualities, transforming the
hotel to studio and then finally to the work itself.(2)
The implications of studio as
art have been exponentially increased in Turrell's ongoing
land art project at Roden Crater. Spanning a large site near Flagstaff,
Arizona, Turrell oversees the construction of a complex of spaces
that combine experiences of light, dark and space in a project
he has been working on since 1975 (though the actual purchase
took place in 1979).(3) Turrell's
work at the Mendota Block and his continuing progress at the Roden
Crater provide an interesting opportunity to examine the nature
of his studio practice, particularly through explication of his
treatment and use of the materials (including the studio itself),
the stylistic innovations therein and his intention while doing
so. Turrell's alternative treatment of the studio is quite different
than what Caroline Jones describes as non-studio in reference
to Robert Smithson:
| "Rather, the non-studio attribute is a kind of theoretical positioning within a newly valued discourse of post-modernism, indicating that the studio will be denied sole importance as the site of creation or meaning." (4) |
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While she indicates that Smithson maintained studio space here
and there while embarking out into the world to physically realize
his art projects, Turrell united studio and art practice into
one homogenous being.
Before beginning a career in art,
Turrell attended Pomona College in Claremont, California where
he studied psychology and mathematics. This non-traditional precursor
to an MFA in fine art at Claremont College led Turrel to become
more concerned with human perception than with traditional art
investigation. His goal therefore became to plumb the depths of
how and why we perceive light and space in a very elemental, alchemical
manner. From the epiphanies of Afrum-Proto and his early
experiments with light (using blank slides and a high-wattage
during a short stint at the University of California at Irvine),
Turrell began to hone the crafting of light, space and perception
in a manner that would grow to include the space of both creation
and exhibition:
| "By making something out of light
with light filling space, I am concerned with issues of
how we perceive. It's not only a reaction to things physical.
For me, working with light in large spaces was more a desire
to work in larger realms, a desire that art not be limited
to the European structure of works on canvas." (5) |
The large spaces Turrell describes first took shape through the alteration of the studios at the Mendota Block. Initially, Turrell literally built a wall between himself and the outside world while altering the structure of the former hotel in order to experiment with the projected light structures in a pure environment. The pristine, smooth and absolutely dark interiors became not only the studio—in which Turrell could think, experiment and perfect—but also an inseparable component of the work as a whole. After months of monastic experimentation and sensory deprivation, Turrell opened a window for ventilation and was struck with the power of a shaft of sunlight crossing the room. The qualities of headlights and fleeting sources of moving light that occurred throughout the night led to precision construction of holes, or Stoppages. The Mendota Stoppages, as they would be called, consisted of inviting guests into the spaces, entertaining them for a short time in the living area of the studios and finally bringing them into the spaces to view a performance of the phenomena of light and space. Turrell cut his first Skyspace from the roof of the hotel, an act that would inform many works to come.(6)
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From the onset of the experimentations in form and performance that comprised the Mendota Stoppages, it was impossible to separate the space from the art. Rather than abandoning the studio altogether, Turrell was able to fuse the two in a way that neither negated nor criticized studio practice. The Roden Crater project, in its three decades of progress, shows this unique approach in grand scale. In an era when many artists were working outside of accepted art venues, such as De Maria and Smithson, Turrell sought out a site in nature to create a more ambitious project. Smithson struggled with what Jones calls a relationship with technology that was "oscillatory and complex," in that he had worked with technology in the construction of pieces like Spiral Jetty but criticized his contemporaries for taking part in technological collaboration.(7) Turrell is (and was) at once aware of the role of technology in the arts and comfortable with his relationship to technological sensibility: |
| "The work I do does not have to do
with science or demonstrations of scientific principles.
My work has to do with perception—how we see and how
we perceive. Though I use the information and need the help
of people in the sciences to calculate positions of celestial
events and to solve problems of refraction caused by atmospheric
pressure and temperature, for example, my work does not
push the boundaries of science. I think artists have a lot
more to do with investigating the limits of perception than
science does at this time. The basic difference, though,
is one of intent. I am more interested in posing questions
than answering them." (8) |
His desire was to take the concepts
he pioneered in the Mendota Hotel to the desert, crafting a volcano-cum-temple,
in which he would build a grandiose artwork filled with cavities
of light sensing and a conical celestial vault.(9)
That Turrell would need to convince
many intermediaries of the efficacy of his project, cajole a successful
land buyer to sell him the land on which the crater sat and become
a cattle rancher in order to secure the loan that would cement
his ownership of the land is beyond the scope of this paper. How
Turrell combined ideation, aquisition and creation of a complex
work of art with a place that was simultaneously studio
(physical location) and studio (atmosphere of creative
exposition and execution) is the critical purpose of what is discussed
here. As was true at the Mendota Block, the art works that comprise
the Roden Crater and the crater itself are inseparable. Rather
than simply housing Turrell's work or being converted into something
as basic as an extremely out-of-the-way alternative gallery space,
the Roden Crater will be a naked eye observatory and a pantheon
to light and celestial phenomena.
Jones describes Smithson's take
on the traditional role of the studio as "a source of modernist
isolation that must now be opposed."(10)
It is clear, however, that this type of isolation that Smithson
found so objectionable and incompatible with his views on his
own practice and within his critiques of others has been an integral
component of Turrell's success. Turrell has been quite comfortable
working outside the traditional "white cube" art world—he
has triumphantly inserted his intention and philosophy into his
work in innovative and often iconoclastic representations of thoughts,
feelings and experiences. These manifest themselves alternately
through isolation, deprivation and a profound sense of what is
heavenly and eternal. Perhaps his intuitive love of the perception
of what is eternal and dynamic all around us—light, space,
celestial bodies marching across the day and night sky—has
aided his unification of studio and art. While Smithson and all
of the others struggled with the banal conflicts of studio or
non-studio, Turrell has chosen a path similar to Rilke:
| "Let me put aside every desire, every
relationship except this one, so that my heart grows used
to its farthest spaces. Better that it live fully aware,
in the terror of its stars, than as if protected, soothed
by what is near." (11) |
Turrell's accomplishments and philosophy show very clearly that
one need not choose studio, non-studio or anti-studio.
While artists work in an era that has been called post-studio,
where and how the artist works is an integral component of the
end product. The Mendota Stoppages and Roden Crater project have
been fashioned by their environment and cannot be separated in
any manner as merely location—they are a gestalt entity.
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(1) Calvin Tomkins, Lives of the Artists (Henry Holt and Co.,
2008), 106
(2) Nicholas Philip James, James Turrell: Inside Outside (CV Publications
(1 Sep 2005)), 7
(3) Craig E. Adcock, James Turrell: The Art of Light and Space
(University of California Press, 1990), 156
(4) Caroline A Jones, Machine in the Studio: Constructing the
Postwar American Artist (University of Chicago Press, 1998)
(5) James Turrell, Mapping spaces: A topological survey of the
work by James Turrell (Peter Blum Edition, 1987), Statement
(6) Adcock, 85
(7) Jones, 330
(8) Turrell, Statement
(9) Tomkins, 110
(10) Jones, 272
(11) Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke
(Harper Perennial)
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