QUOTES by James Turrell
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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.
Quote by -James Turrell
We have spent billions to go to the moon - we go to this lesser satellite called the moon and say we are in space, but we are in space right now; we just don't feel ourselves to be in space. Some forms of art and some forms of spirituality do give us that sense.
Quote by -James Turrell
I like illusion when it is so convincing that we might as well see reality this way - I like to present to our belief system something that is convincing, that 'we know not to be.'
Quote by -James Turrell
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.
Quote by -James Turrell
There are very few religious experiences that aren't explained using the vocabulary of light.
Quote by -James Turrell
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.
Quote by -James Turrell
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.
Quote by -James Turrell
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.
Quote by -James Turrell
The cardones cactus is very similar to saguaro cactus in Arizona. These cacti only grow in very specific, particular places.
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I've always thought of Las Vegas as Los Angeles on its day off. There's not any hierarchy of taste, and that's what L.A. always was to me: It's not really a town of culture - it's a town of entertainment.
Quote by -James Turrell
I come from a family that does not believe in art to this day. They think art is vanity.
Quote by -James Turrell
My desire is to bring astronomical events and objects down into your personal, lived-in space.
Quote by -James Turrell
We're part of creating this world in which we live, but we're unaware of how we do that or even that we do that.
Quote by -James Turrell
I feel that buildings often have a workaday aspect that you see during the daylight hours, and a more resplendent side that emerges after dark.
Quote by -James Turrell
This idea that light plays an important part in our life is important to me.
Quote by -James Turrell
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.
Quote by -James Turrell
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.
Quote by -James Turrell
The sky always seems to be out there, away from us. I like to bring it down in close contact with us, so you feel you are in it. We feel we are at the bottom of this ocean of air; we are actually on a planet.
Quote by -James Turrell
I have high expectations of my audience, and in general, I would say they've met that.
Quote by -James Turrell
At Roden Crater, I was interested in taking the cultural artifice of art out into the natural surround. I wanted the work to be enfolded in nature in such a way that light from the sun, moon and stars empowered the spaces. I wanted to bring culture to the natural surround as if one was designing a garden.
Quote by -James Turrell
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.
Quote by -James Turrell
I am interested in relating the things we see with the things we see with our eyes closed.
Quote by -James Turrell
I like to use light as a material, but my medium is actually perception. I want you to sense yourself sensing - to see yourself seeing.
Quote by -James Turrell
One way to understand light in the ocean of air is by flying it. Life in the air is an extension of perceiving.
Quote by -James Turrell
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.
Quote by -James Turrell
My mother did not have a toaster oven and would toast bread in the oven, which I thought was stupid. They didn't do cars and electricity, that kind of stuff.
Quote by -James Turrell
We think we receive all that we perceive, but in fact, we actually give the sky its colour.
Quote by -James Turrell
Nowhere in the job description of an artist is the requirement that I must validate your taste.
Quote by -James Turrell
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.
Quote by -James Turrell
I'm working to bring celestial objects like the sun and moon into the spaces that we inhabit.
Quote by -James Turrell
Generally, we use light to illuminate other things. I like the thingness, the materiality of light itself. So it feels like it's occupying the space, making a plane, being something that was there, not just passing through. Because light is just passing through. I make these spaces that seem to arrest it for our perception.
Quote by -James Turrell
I've always been interested in arrival, and coming to a space, and even to looking back at where you were.
Quote by -James Turrell
I want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed with seeing... like the wordless thought that comes from looking in a fire.
Quote by -James Turrell
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.
Quote by -James Turrell
We live within this reality we create, and we're quite unaware of how we create the reality.
Quote by -James Turrell
Light is a powerful substance. We have a primal connection to it. But, for something so powerful, situations for its felt presence are fragile.
Quote by -James Turrell
It is only when light is reduced that the pupil opens and feeling goes out of the eyes like touch.
Quote by -James Turrell
This wonderful elixir of light is the thing that actually connects the immaterial with the material - that connects the cosmic to the plain everyday existence that we try to live in.
Quote by -James Turrell