Top 55 James Turrell Quotes

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.

I am interested in relating the things we see with the things we see with our eyes closed.

There’s traditionally been a large disconnection in contemporary art between the audience and the artist. Generally, audiences are looking towards what they like, and I can tell you, that’s the last thing on an artist’s mind.

I feel my work is made for one being, one individual. You could say that’s me, but that’s not really true. It’s for an idealized viewer.

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.

Nowhere in the job description of an artist is the requirement that I must validate your taste.

Usually we are illuminating things instead of looking at the light itself. But I like this quality of the light being the revelation.

I always thought that people who live in the desert are a little crazy. It could be that the desert attracts that kind of person, or that after living there, you become that. It doesn’t make much difference. But now I’ve done my 40 years in the desert.

At my first exhibits, people were saying that’s just a light on the wall.

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.

I used to think that only people who were crazy were attracted to the desert, but once you’ve lived there, you become that way anyway.

The works of previous artists have come from their own experiences or insights but haven’t given the experience itself. They had set themselves up as a sort of interpreter to the layman… Our interest is in a form where you realize that the media are just perception.

I’ve always been interested in arrival, and coming to a space, and even to looking back at where you were.

I don’t want you looking at the light fixture; I want you looking at where light goes. But more than that, I’m interested in the effect of light upon you and your perceptions.

The people in L.A. do orient themselves to light. I used to call it ‘Tan Fascist Culture.’ Everyone there is tanned, wears dark sunglasses, looks like a movie star even when they’re not.

One way to understand light in the ocean of air is by flying it. Life in the air is an extension of perceiving.

I would describe Los Angeles as actually not having taste. In New York, there’s taste. But you have to remember that taste is censorship. It’s a form of restriction.

I started out with projected-light works and working indoors, but I’d prepare the walls – by sanding, etcetera – the way you’d prepare a canvas for painting.

It is only when light is reduced that the pupil opens and feeling goes out of the eyes like touch.

I’ve always wanted to make a light that looks like the light you see in your dream.

There aren’t many artists who can feel sorry for me.

We think we receive all that we perceive, but in fact, we actually give the sky its colour.

Color is just in a small area of our vision, and the rest we add with the mind.

My aunt was Frances Hodges, who in the Fifties was the editor of ‘Seventeen’ and later one of the creators of ‘Mademoiselle.’ She was my Auntie Mame; she loved culture. She was a Quaker, but she became a milliner against all Quaker logic – they feel that fashion and art are vanities – because she loved fashion.

There was a time when I restored antique planes to support my art habit.

It’s difficult for people to visualize from my drawings what it’s going to be, so I often find myself talking them into things that they go along with, and when they see what’s been made, they are surprised.

It’s really terrific to see Pittsburgh recognize the Mattress Factory.

I’m interested in light. It’s a very direct, pragmatic, American, rather naive approach.

I come from L.A. where there’s a sense of show. But that’s not a bad word in my mind. We say art ‘show,’ don’t we? ‘Show’ implies entertainment.

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.

The lunar cycle within the solar season: that kind of syncopated rhythm is what life relates to.

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.

I’m working to bring celestial objects like the sun and moon into the spaces that we inhabit.

One of the tenets in Quaker meditation is that you ‘go inside to greet the light.’ I am interested in this light that’s inside greeting the light that’s outside.

I like to work with it so that you feel it physically, so you feel the presence of light inhabiting a space. My desire is to set up a situation to which I take you and let you see. It becomes your experience.

If you just add all the time, add more and more light, it loses its meaning.

There are different stages when you fly. The first stage is the dollhouse effect, seeing everything on Earth like it’s a model. Suddenly, all of your concerns seem very small.

I was waiting for L.A. to always become something important. I gave up… I left in 1974.

Las Vegas is about distraction.

I am involved in the architecture of space.

This idea that light plays an important part in our life is important to me.

We use the vocabulary of light to describe a spiritual experience.

I sell blue sky and coloured air.

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.

My desire is to bring astronomical events and objects down into your personal, lived-in space.

I apprehend light – I make events that shape or contain light.

Each day is a different length of time and that gives a different length to the cusp between light and darkness or darkness and light.

My art has no object, no image, no point of focus.

I look at light as a material. It is physical. It is photons. Yes, it exhibits wave behavior, but it is a thing.

There is an idea, first of all, of vision fully formed with the eyes closed. Of course the vision we have in a lucid dream often has greater lucidity and clarity than vision with the eyes open.

If you’re not an optimist, forget being an artist.

Light is a powerful substance. We have a primal connection to it. But, for something so powerful, situations for its felt presence are fragile.

You can’t stop demographics. And show me a fence that ever worked. It didn’t work at Hadrian’s Wall. The Great Wall of China didn’t work. The Berlin Wall.

From the very beginning, I was very interested just in light, and art seemed to be a way to work with it.

Art history is littered with work that involves light.