James Turrell

James Turrell – Childhood in a Quaker family, pilot’s license and art education

James Turrell was born in Los Angeles on 6 May 1943. The son of a strict conservative Quaker family, he had to do without many of the achievements of modern civilisation during his childhood – his parents did not use electricity and did not own a car. James Turrell did not share this stance and instead was enthusiastic about flying as a young man. At the age of 16 he took his pilot’s license which he actively used for his later artistic work in the search for suitable land formations. His refusal as an avowed pacifist to perform military service earned him a prison sentence of 22 months. Afterwards he studied and graduated in psychology and maths at Pomona College in Claremont, California, but despite this first academic success, Turrell turned towards art and in the 1960s first started working with his characteristic light spaces, for which he would soon become world-famous. His early attempts were awarded with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and further studies at Claremont Graduate University followed. 

The international breakthrough with the Roden Crater

James Turrell’s probably his most important masterpiece was accomplished as early as the 1970s. During a flight in the desert of Arizona near his later home of Flagstaff, he discovered a crater in the centre of an extinct volcano. He acquired the 400 square kilometer surrounding area of steppe in 1974, gave it the name Roden Crater, and proceeded to intersect the volcanic landscape with an elaborate structure of shafts, tunnels and rooms, transforming it into an impressive light park attracting numerous visitors from home and abroad. It is still considered today the artist’s most famous project. James Turrell astonished the international artworld for more than half a century with his interpretation of light and space, creating an immaterial architecture that is accessible and explorable, but never tangible. 

The sky as canvas, the stars as muses

James Turrell sees the sky as his canvas and the stars as his muses. Time and again he boards his plane, takes off, and flies circles and trails through the sky and the clouds for many thousands of flying hours in the search for inspiration and impulse for a new work. In this way, the artist succeeds in penetrating the extreme borderlands of perception and making these accessible to his audience as an experience of wordless thoughts and sensations. James Turrell has received many prizes and awards for his art, including the appointment to Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 1991 and the National Medal of Arts in 2013.

James Turrell lives and works together with his third wife Kyung Lee in Maryland and Flagstaff, Arizona.