Thank you James Turrell!

"The artist's job, I believe is to either recreate an image or experience in a way which asks the viewer either to use these methods of looking, whether that be a re-contextualization of space and/or materials or by consciously forcing the viewer to consider different ways of looking. For an image or experience to become art it must have an artist behind it with an intention of it being perceived as art. And based off the above description of what art is, that means the artist must make the viewer look at the image or experience with his or her "art looking lens", paying attention to both intellectual and aesthetic intentions. The other option for the artist is to make the viewer conscious of how he or she is looking and create a space which forces the viewer to look differently, possibly in which looking then becomes a sensory or emotional experience as opposed to an intellectual or solely optical one."

I wrote this as part of an essay I wrote about what art is. I wrote how the viewer's perception of something being art becomes just as important as the artists' intention of creating a piece of art. While anything can be artful, it takes an artist to present an image, object, or experience in a way in which the viewer(and a general mass of viewers- not just an individual) can then perceive it as art. The traditional way of re-contextualizing images, such as in ready-mades, is to bring an object into a gallery space or another setting which defines it as art, or to put a frame around it, declaring it art. Yet, I am particularly impressed with artists who re-define the way we look at images, objects, or experiences as opposed to relying on prescribed ways of art viewing.

This weekend I finally saw the James Turrell piece, Meeting, at P.S. 1. The piece, described on P.S.1's website "is composed of a square room with a rectangular opening cut directly into the ceiling. Carefully calculated artificial lights produce an orange glow on the white walls of the room, permitting the viewer to appreciate the intensity of the sky’s color." The room is only open one hour before dusk and on clear sky days. I was so lucky to come on a beautiful day: crisp air, clear sky.

As I entered the room, I could feel the air from the outside, not in the form of a breeze but rather as a damp cool and crisp air that permeated the space. There was a sense of both camaraderie and solitude between strangers in the space; some sitting on wooden benches attached to the walls, reminiscent of sauna benches, others were laying on the floor. Everyone's eyes were up at the ceiling, staring intently as the square hole in the ceiling subtly changed color. It seemed as if some people stayed there for hours, meditating on this ephemeral yet permanent image of an abstracted sky or of a natural modernist painting.

And I thought to myself: this guy did it! James Turrell succesfully created a piece of artwork which did not just recontextualize something artful yet mundane (like the sky) to make it art, but he did it in a way which forced the viewers to experience it differently than they do other artworks. We were sitting or laying; we were looking up; we were there for minutes or for hours; it became a sensory experience with the weather from the outside permeating the space. The viewers were also forced to acknowledge one another, sitting across or next to someone within this square room. The viewers become part of the work, along with the weather, the sky, the lights, the seating. It was really exciting. And yet, Turrell did not abandon all of traditional art viewing: the frame of the sky is a square, there is a clear object to look at, the viewer is still passive: all eh has to do is look. Turrell used these traditions of art viewing to his advantage to manipulate the viewer to then experience this work in a totally sensory and experiential way.

So this is a hip hip hooray to James Turrell! Hip hip......HOORAY!