Embark on a Mind-Bending Art Odyssey to Uruguay & Argentina

[Judi Lynn]

Find out why celebrities like Drake idolize the artist.

By Daniel Maurer
Published on 10/26/2022 at 5:32 PM



José Ignacio Online

Just when you thought there could be no better way to catch the sunset—sipping on tannat at a rooftop infinity pool in the idyllic beach town of Jose Ignacio, Uruguay—a guide tells you it’s time to enter the skyspace. He leads you to what looks like a domed sepulcher, opens a monumental door, and ushers you into the latest immersive installation by an artist whose work is so “life-changing” that famous people around the world can't stop throwing money at him. And after what you see in this room, you too might just join the cult of James Turrell.

More:
https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/visit-james-turrell-skyspace-south-america

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Wikipedia:

James Turrell (born May 6, 1943) is an American artist known for his work within the Light and Space movement. Much of Turrell's career has been devoted to a still-unfinished work, Roden Crater, a natural cinder cone crater located outside Flagstaff, Arizona, that he is turning into a massive naked-eye observatory; and for his series of skyspaces, enclosed spaces that frame the sky.[1]

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President Barack Obama presents the National Medal of Arts to visual artist James Turrell in a White House ceremony on July 28, 2014

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Background
James Turrell was born in Los Angeles, California.[2][3] His father, Archibald Milton Turrell,[4] was an aeronautical engineer and educator. His mother, Margaret Hodges Turrell,[4] trained as a medical doctor and later worked in the Peace Corps. His parents were Quakers.

Turrell obtained a pilot's license when he was 16 years old. Later, registered as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, he flew Buddhist monks out of Chinese-controlled Tibet.[5] Some writers have suggested it was a CIA mission; Turrell called it "a humanitarian mission" — and that he found "some beautiful places to fly". For years he restored antique airplanes to support his "art habit".[5]

He received a BA degree from Pomona College in perceptual psychology in 1965 (including the study of the Ganzfeld effect) and also studied mathematics, geology, and astronomy. The following year, Turrell enrolled in the graduate Studio Art program at the University of California, Irvine, where he began making work using light projections.[6] His studies at Irvine were interrupted in 1966, when he was arrested for coaching young men to avoid the Vietnam draft. He spent about a year in jail.[1] In 1973, he received an Master of Arts degree from Claremont Graduate University.[7]

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Roden Crater

In 1979 Turrell acquired an extinct cinder cone volcano located outside Flagstaff, Arizona. Since then he has spent decades moving tons of dirt and building tunnels and apertures to turn this crater into a massive naked-eye observatory for experiencing celestial phenomena.[5]

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Satellite view of Roden Crater, the site of an epic artwork in progress by James Turrell outside Flagstaff, Arizona

Skyspaces

In the 1970s, Turrell began his series of "skyspaces" enclosed spaces open to the sky through an aperture in the roof. A Skyspace is an enclosed room large enough for roughly 15 people. Inside, the viewers sit on benches along the edge to view the sky through an opening in the roof.[18] As a lifelong Quaker, Turrell designed the Live Oak Meeting House for the Society of Friends, with an opening or skyhole in the roof, wherein the notion of light takes on a decidedly religious connotation. (See PBS documentary). His work Meeting (1986) at P.S. 1, which consists of a square room with a rectangular opening cut directly into the ceiling, is a recreation of such a meeting house.[19] In 2013, Turrell created another Quaker skyspace, Greet the Light, at the newly rebuilt Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting in Philadelphia.[20]

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Turrell



Please see this google images link for amazing views of this man's deeply interesting work:

https://tinyurl.com/2736dkjc

[Judi Lynn]

1. Article discovered at google images, re:Roden Crater

Roden Crater: the work James Turrell has worked on for over 40 years



It has been more than four decades since the artist James Turrell, a pioneer in the use of light in works of art, began working on Roden Crater, a dormant volcano in Arizona that has transformed into a creation of great magnitude.

Turrell, who bought the more than 1979-kilometer volcano in Flagstaff in 3.2, has transformed the volcano into a space for interaction with bodies celestial through variations of the light of the sun, the moon and the stars.

Some art experts have compared the work Turrell is doing on the Roden Crater to that of Stonehenge and the pyramids at Teotihuacán.



But this can only be confirmed by a few people in the world as, for now, Roden Crater is closed to visitors.

According to those who have been able to visit the volcano, what Turrell has done inside it are several tunnels, observation chambers and a bronze staircase that leads to the open sky from the bowels of the site.



More:
https://fahrenheitmagazine.com/en/modern-art/Visual/roden-crater-the-play-james-turrell-has-worked-on-for-over-40-years#.Y2IpUXbMLy8

[Ponietz]

2. 1907 Hilma Af Klint

The first abstract modernist and one of my favorite artists. So much since then is derivative.

[

[Judi Lynn]

3. Amazing. I'm seeing what you mean. Thanks for throwing some light on this.

It's hard to un-see it now!

[Ponietz]

4. Kandinsky, Mondrian and Escher were all influenced by her work

Art history books need revision.

Turrell’s work uses multi-million dollar budgets to architecturally express themes Klint and others (such as Raymond Jonson) exhausted with paint and canvas a century ago. Really cool but I’m not sure it’s art.

Emil Bisstram, c. 1940’s:

[link:

[Judi Lynn]

5. Looks as if he had a little help, for sure! Wow.

Loved Mondrian and Kandinsky as soon as I saw them. Wonderful! As soon as I saw Klint's black swan and white swan I immediately thought of Escher, who clearly came later, too!

So Klint came at the forefront of the new age in art which followed the invention of the camera and artists were freed of the expectation they should produce images exactly as they saw them. A woman, too, at a time that just didn't happen!

Thanks for the information you've brought to light. It's all new to me, and it makes art's history more interesting for certain. ⭐️⭐️⭐️