Rooms in an old Santa Monica hotel were sealed off, the window apertures controlled by the artist to allow natural and artificial light to enter the darkened spaces in specific ways. Documentation describes “The Mendota Stoppages,” a pivotal environment Turrell developed from 1969 to 1974. Turrell’s retrospective even starts with a camera, though you’ll need to look closely to find it. Cameras became the image technology defining contemporary life. Inexpensive Polaroids made “fixing shadows” common and instantaneous digital cameras waited in the wings to join analog ones for amateur use and, a spellbound world watched live pictures of an extraterrestrial man walking on the moon, bathed in reflected light. The long arc of camera history exploded in the 1960s, when Turrell’s work began to coalesce. Turrell’s art resonates with the 1839 invention of photography, sometimes called “the art of fixing shadows.” However, in addition to paintings like Lane’s or Kensett’s, a different mid-19th century development seems very much to the point. Looking at an artwork gives way to being immersed within its perceptual gymnastics and, finally, seeing oneself see. In both works, the art finally exists within a viewer’s eye, rather than outside it. “Breathing Light” (2013) is a walk-in environment - an elevated white room with curved corners, reached by climbing an imposing stairway and flooded with indescribable colors from a computer-driven sequence of changing electric lights. “Afrum (White)” (1966) is an intense beam of white light from a projector hidden in the ceiling, which creates an illusion of geometric form in a corner across the room. (Who did what, when, is often contested.) The earliest piece dates from 1966, while the most recent one was commissioned for the retrospective. Add to Wish List Link to this Book Add to Bookbag Sell this Book Buy it at Amazon Compare Prices. Guggenheim Museum, New York and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, this comprehensive volume illuminates the origins and motivations of James Turrell's incredibly diverse and exciting body of work-from his Mendota studio days to his monumental work-in-progress Roden Crater. His work quickly built on innovations by slightly older Light and Space artists Robert Irwin and Doug Wheeler. Kim, Florian Holzherr (Photographer) Format: Hardcover. Copublished with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for the major touring retrospective and concurrent exhibitions at the Solomon R. But the show gives a good sense of Turrell’s artistic trajectory, primarily from 10 abstract light-installations that explore perceptual phenomena.
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