James Turrell
Artist
1943-05-06
Quotes by James Turrell
-
In Arizona, we're at 7,000 feet, so we're above half of the world's atmosphere. It's crisp but hard, a side-raking light that can be revealing but doesn't have the softness that maritime air has.
Read quote -
Drake went through my exhibition. I did meet him in Los Angeles, and he was in the spaces that I did do there, and has some images from that.
Read quote -
I'm working to bring celestial objects like the sun and moon into the spaces that we inhabit.
Read quote -
I don't think my work is about the spiritual life, but it certainly touches on it.
Read quote -
Light is a powerful substance. We have a primal connection to it. But, for something so powerful, situations for its felt presence are fragile.
Read quote -
At Roden Crater, I was interested in taking the cultural artifice of art out into the natural surround. I wanted the work to be enfolded in nature in such a way that light from the sun, moon and stars empowered the spaces. I wanted to bring culture to the natural surround as if one was designing a garden.
Read quote -
There's truth in light. You can tell what elements a star is composed of and the temperature at which it burns by the light it gives off.
Read quote -
We have spent billions to go to the moon - we go to this lesser satellite called the moon and say we are in space, but we are in space right now; we just don't feel ourselves to be in space. Some forms of art and some forms of spirituality do give us that sense.
Read quote -
My mother did not have a toaster oven and would toast bread in the oven, which I thought was stupid. They didn't do cars and electricity, that kind of stuff.
Read quote -
In age of consumerism and materialism, I traffic in blue sky and colored air.
Read quote -
We're made for the light of a cave and for twilight. Twilight is the time we see best. When we dim the light down, and the pupil opens, feeling comes out of the eye like touch. Then you really can feel colour, and experience it.
Read quote -
We're part of creating this world in which we live, but we're unaware of how we do that or even that we do that.
Read quote -
We live within this reality we create, and we're quite unaware of how we create the reality.
Read quote -
We use the vocabulary of light to describe a spiritual experience.
Read quote -
In a way, light unites the spiritual world and the ephemeral, physical world. People frequently talk about spiritual experiences using the vocabulary of light: Saul on the road to Damascus, near-death experiences, samadhi or the light-filled void of Buddhist enlightenment.
Read quote -
If you take blue paint and yellow paint and you mix them, you get green paint. But if you take blue light and yellow light and mix them, you get white light. This is a shock to most people.
Read quote