JAMES TURRELL, LET THERE BE LIGHT

In the Chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis it is told that God said "Let there be Light. And there was Light. And God saw that it was good."  Since then the sun guides our life cycle. Wonderful sunrises and sunsets make them to be unique moments of life. 
Looking at them makes us blind and it damages our retinas. The way of looking intensely at the nature colors makes us wonder of the beauty of a particular violet, of an orange, or of a spectacular sky of Madrid at any day of the year.  


Antonio López is not the only contemporary artist enthralled by the color of heaven. 
There are even more. In what follows, I´d like to talk about the American artist, James Turrell. The reason I chose to deal with him here is because of his ability to capture and recreate the changing of atmospheric colors. He is the most fashionable artist in the United States this summer. He is a kind of Light´s prophet. I would say that he resembles the BRANDING BLUE COLOR. That is James Turrell. "Let there be Light ", says the artist, and the COLOR appears. 

How does he do it? 
Don´t miss this short video. 
I´m always interested in how (technical means) and who (the numerous professionals) works behind each exhibition. They all carry it out so that other many people can achieve as much aesthetic experience as possible.
Elliot J. Eisner (1) states that at the moment of seeing an exhibition it is important to undertake an emotional journey. When we talk about an aesthetic experience we mean the one deeply related with human life. According to this idea, art lives in a space existing between an object and an individual. It can be achieved an aesthetic experience at any time in which the human being gets into a deep relationship with life.

Who is James Turrell?

From my point of view, he looks amazing. His white beard is friendly. His eyes remind me of the prophetic Holy Books figures. The Bloomberg´s interview shows us that Turrell can be a good speaker from many points of view. He can be seen as a kind of Moses of Michelangelo figure in front of the camera.

James Turrell looks as if he came out of the sea, dressed in the Yves Klein blue color jacket. Definitely, he is a titan working with Light.    

Since ages he has been a visionary and hard worker. He has stored an amount of experiences and landscapes in his memory. Then, he was able to recreate colors in his works of art. This summer of 2013 Turrell has reached the opportunity to exhibit at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York and at two other popular museums of contemporary art in the USA: Los Angeles and Houston. 

Turrell considers himself as a co-creator. It is pure abstraction. He makes art with light. We, visitors, only perceive that the space is changing on and on, and The Light changes the nuance of the colors. To the artist, it is important to obtain that game in the same way you try to get involved in it. For you to live it! 

He can (and therein lies its genius) structure, frame and RE-CREATE his experiences with light so that you can revive them and receive emotions such as:

·       the pasty color of a desert,

·       the intense yellow of summer

·       the blue of the full moon. 


All this is difficult to do. Turrell has needed the wisdom of the observation, the traveler´s patience looking for something, the ocean´s peace. However, in his installations he offers us a historical time hidden in the kaleidoscope of his brain.

AtenReig at the Guggenheim is a big festival created for the visitor´s perception. It represents a challenge for the building itself. It is a landscape of changing colors in which many artists have tried to approach to it unsuccessfully. James Turrell has done it in an amazing, a poetical and a visual way. 
We live in a world empowered by the electronic systems. The color is behind marketing and advertisements. A thousand of hubs and satellite channels carry an invisible color to make life easier. 

James Turrell is a kind of funny person at the moment of being interviewed. His way of speaking “catches” our all attention. When he is explaining something about the creative process he constantly laughs at himself. But behind that irony, we find a great artist who is able to make this process of seeing as simple as he can. He opens our minds.

His aim is looking for each person´s eyes in order to captivate and link us with his art. There is also a piece of dream and fantasy in Turrell´s works. That atmosphere guides us in a deeper psychology. His works make us imagine textures and recreate smells. We know that the eye is the mind´s window. The world enters in our minds through the sight; it is reflected and it comes into our minds through neuronal processes. 

Turrell plays in contrast to his works of art. Looking at an empty space filled with color allows us to “see” a landscape behind it. It is a living and an imaginative place. Is that hermeneutics? The perception lasts on the mind although the color is vanished. The brain enables emotions and feelings. The Color raises us somewhere higher. You cannot stop looking at the sky when it is changing its colors.

Art brings us something sublime that we are unable to understand it. Turrell is capable from his inner world to bring the sky closer to us. 
Regarding the concept of LIGHT AT THE MUSEUM Turrell joins Wright. There is also a white light. The Guggenheim dome has magically been lit. "Let there be LIGHT", Turrell said. And suddenly, the vault of the Guggenheim Museum placed in New York, has magically been lit. 

Summer is the time to lie down and admire the sky. 
And if you like sunbathing, you should be careful with it!