James Turrell Quotes
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I want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed with seeing... like the wordless thought that comes from looking in a fire.
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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.
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I am interested in relating the things we see with the things we see with our eyes closed.
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I'm working to bring celestial objects like the sun and moon into the spaces that we inhabit.
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I have high expectations of my audience, and in general, I would say they've met that.
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I sell blue sky and coloured air.
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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.
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It is only when light is reduced that the pupil opens and feeling goes out of the eyes like touch.
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In age of consumerism and materialism, I traffic in blue sky and colored air.
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All art is contemporary art because it had to be made when it was now.
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To some degree, to control light, I have to have a way to form it, so I use form almost like the stretcher bar of a canvas.
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It's possible to gather light that's older than our solar system.
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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.
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I come from a family that does not believe in art to this day. They think art is vanity.
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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.
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From the very beginning, I was very interested just in light, and art seemed to be a way to work with it.
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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.
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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.
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I haven't been that great at attending my own openings. Still, I'm learning to enjoy this a lot more than I used to.
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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.
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I live in the sky as a pilot, so it has great meaning to me.
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Color is just in a small area of our vision, and the rest we add with the mind.
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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.
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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.