James Turrell Quotes

Quotes about:

• Light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itself the revelation.

  James Turrell

  Light, Vision, Revelations

  James Turrell, Julia Brown, Craig E. Adcock, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.) (1985). “Occluded front, James Turrell”, Lapis Pr

  141 Copy 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 . . . I like to work with it so that you feel it physically, so you feel the presence of light inhabiting a space.

  James Turrell

  Powerful, Light, Space

  James Turrell, Julia Brown, Craig E. Adcock, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.) (1985). “Occluded front, James Turrell”, Lapis Pr

  119 Copy quote

• With no object no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking.

  James Turrell

  Focus, Objects

  "Blinded by the light: James Turrell obliterates the senses in stunning new Mona wing". Interview with Brigid Delaney, www.theguardian.com. January 25, 2018.

  133 Copy quote

• We eat light, drink it in through our skins. With a little more exposure to light, you feel part of things physically. I like feeling the power of light and space physically because then you can order it materially. Seeing is a very sensuous act-there's a sweet deliciousness to feeling yourself see something.

  James Turrell

  Sweet, Light, Order

  140 Copy quote

• My desire is to set up a situation to which I take you and let you see. It becomes your experience.

  James Turrell

  Desire, Situation

  Craig E. Adcock, James Turrell (1990). “James Turrell: The Art of Light and Space”, p.205, Univ of California Press

  133 Copy quote

• We create the reality in which we live.

  James Turrell

  Reality

  59 Copy quote

• Space has a way of looking. It seems like it has a presence of vision. When you come into it, it is there, it’s been waiting for you.

  James Turrell

  Space, Waiting, Vision

  125 Copy quote

• The sky is no longer out there, but it is right on the edge of the space you are in. The sense of colour is generated inside you. If you then go outside you will see a different coloured sky. You colour the sky.

  James Turrell

  Light, Sky, Space

  101 Copy quote

• Science strives for answers, but art is happy with a good question.

  James Turrell

  Photography, Art, Creativity

  "Incredible Lightness" by Julie L. Belcove, www.harpersbazaar.com. Apr 19, 2013.

  72 Copy quote

• My work is about your seeing. There is a rich tradition in painting of work about light, but it is not light -- it is the record of seeing. My material is light, and it is responsive to your seeing.

  James Turrell

  Light, Records, Painting

  James Turrell, Julia Brown, Craig E. Adcock, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.) (1985). “Occluded front, James Turrell”, Lapis Pr

  101 Copy quote

• I always wanted to make a light that looks like the light you see in your dream. Because the way that light infuses the dream, the way the atmosphere is colored, the way light rains off people with auras and things like that...We don't normally see light like that. But we all know it. So this is no unfamiliar territory - or not unfamiliar light. I like to have this kind of light that reminds us of this other place we know.

  James Turrell

  Dream, Rain, Light

  82 Copy quote

• My works are about light in the sense that light is present and there; the work is made of light. It's not about light or a record of it, but it is light. Light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itself revelation.

  James Turrell

  Light, Records, Revelations

  James Turrell, Julia Brown, Craig E. Adcock, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.) (1985). “Occluded front, James Turrell”, Lapis Pr

  72 Copy quote

• I am not an Earth artist, I'm totally involved in the sky.

  James Turrell

  Artist, Sky, Earth

  86 Copy quote

• I like when you feel like you arrive in a very different place, with a different ordering of the reality you normally think of.

  James Turrell

  Reality, Thinking, Different

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  59 Copy quote

• I want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed with seeing, like the wordless thought that comes from looking in a fire.

  James Turrell

  Fire, Design, Atmosphere

  James Turrell, Julia Brown, Craig E. Adcock, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.) (1985). “Occluded front, James Turrell”, Lapis Pr

  49 Copy quote

• I wanted the light to be the revelation. It has to do with what we value. I want people to treasure light.

  James Turrell

  Light, People, Treasure

  "Incredible Lightness" by Julie L. Belcove, www.harpersbazaar.com. April 19, 201.

  47 Copy quote

• I've always felt that night doesn't fall. Night rises. There are these incidences in flying where you just sit there. It's one of the best seats in the house.

  James Turrell

  Fall, Night, House

  Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 23, 2011.

  70 Copy quote

• We live within this reality we create, and we're quite unaware of how we create the reality. So the work is often a general koan into how we go about forming this world in which we live, in particular with seeing.

  James Turrell

  Reality, World, Particular

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  65 Copy quote

• I’m interested that light has thingness itself, so it’s not something that reveals something about other things you’re looking at, but it becomes a revelation in itself.

  James Turrell

  Light, Revelations

  48 Copy quote

• We eat light, drink it in through our skins

  James Turrell

  Light, Skins, Drink

  39 Copy quote

• I make spaces that apprehend light for our perception, and in some ways gather it, or seem to hold it...my work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing.

  James Turrell

  Photography, Creativity, Light

  54 Copy quote

• I was maybe 5 or 6, and my grandmother would begin sitting me in the Quaker meeting house. I asked my grandmother, 'What am I supposed to do?' and she said, 'Just wait, we're going inside to greet the light.' I liked that—this idea to go inside to find that light within, literally as well as figuratively.

  James Turrell

  Grandmother, Light, Ideas

  46 Copy quote

• We think of color as a thing that we’re receiving. And if you go into one of the Skyspaces, you can see that it’s possible to change the color of the sky. Now, I obviously don’t change the color of the sky, but I changed the context of vision.

  James Turrell

  Thinking, Color, Sky

  "Roden Crater". Art21 Interview, art21.org.

  40 Copy quote

• I’ve always felt that night doesn’t fall. Night rises.

  James Turrell

  Fall, Night, Felt

  Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 23, 2011.

  13 Copy quote

• [My work] is using light as a material to influence or affect the medium of perception. I feel that I want to use light as this wonderful and magic elixir that we drink as Vitamin D through the skin - and I mean, we are literally light-eaters - to then affect the way that we see.

  James Turrell

  Mean, Light, Magic

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  37 Copy quote

Page 1 of 2

← Prev

1

2

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin