Our Next Program - Thursday, November 8, 2019 at ​10:00AM                              
 Peoria Riverfront Museum, 222 SW Washington St., Peoria, IL 61602

         

JAMES TURRELL: SKYSPACES

by Dr. Craig Adcock, Professor of Art History, University of Iowa

A childhood fascination with light combined with training  in perceptual psychology led American artist James Turrell to begin experimenting with light as a medium in the mid-1960s, creating artworks that engage viewers with the limits and wonder of human perception. His most famous works are the Skyspaces, rooms with a hole in the ceiling (oculus) that allows one to see the sky above, with nothing in between.  During the day, the oculus simply frames the sky; during a light show at dawn and dusk,  the view of the sky is altered by a cloud of colored light, revealing how we internally create the colors we see and thus, our perceived reality.

Professor Adcockreceived B.F.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. He specializes in 20th-century American and European art, but has taught courses in many other areas of art history. Adcock was a Whitney Halstead Visiting Scholar at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1991 and has received grants and fellowships to support his research, including fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies; the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; and the J. Paul Getty Foundation. His books include James Turrell: The Art of Light and Space (1991); and Marcel Duchamp's Notes from the Large Glass: An N-Dimensional Analysis (1983).

 image upper left:  James Turrell's Twilight Epiphany Skyspace in the Suzanne Deal Booth Centennial Pavilion, Rice University, 2012; photo courtesy of Rice University
image below:  Skyspace at Live Oak Friends Meeting House, Houston, Texas, 2000.  Photo by Joe Aker. Courtesy the artist and Live Oak Friends.