James Turrel and Richard Serra have done a lot of improvements in their art works. By comparing their works, one can is able to understand more on how their works are created and what makes them appear differently from others. Their art works appears similar due to the fact that they depends of similar conditions such as weather changes in order for them to appear differently. However, their works also differ slightly since one depends fully on weather changes while the other one depends on other factors such as lighting. This paper explains the reasons why these art works appears as they do and also it informs the viewer why certain changes occurs on these works and what leads to these changes.
Richard Serra was born in the year 1938 at San Francisco. He worked in still mills located in East Bay after he was through with his studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He later studied for an advanced degree in fine arts. In the year 1966 he moved to New York where he started practicing his arts from industrial materials, mostly metals 1 . His first sculpture was made of materials such as fiberglass and rubber which were nontraditional. Due to his very analytical approach to process, some of the properties such as weight, gravity, pressure and balance, that were initially invisible and associated with sculpture traditionally, became visible and visceral. His career later improved and focused on elliptical forms. These forms steel surface changes its color and texture when exposed to weather.
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James Turrel was born in 1943 at Los Angeles in California. In the year 1965, he joined university of California where he did art graduate studies. Later in 1973 he went for masters in Art at Claremont Graduate School. Since the year 1967, his outstanding work has been seen as a subject for over 160 solo exhibitions that has taken place in different parts of the world. Some of these exhibitions are such as three-venue museum that were presented at Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art 2 . In addition to this, his work has also been seen through permanent installations in different institutions such as Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas and Long Island City in New York among others.
One of the Turrel’s works created at the Osher Sculpture Garden appeared to be very outstanding. It was titled as Three Gems. It was set up as a gift of Mr. and Mrs. Osher. This installation features a view of the sky. However, this view is altered by the effects of L.E.D lighting which highlights the changing light and also the weather conditions outside. The sculpture is cited on a grass covered hill. The viewers have to walk through a tunnel to cut the hill, leading to a cylindrical space which carved out of the hill. The cylindrical space is designed as a rough-hewn which is black in color and basalt stupa form. Inside the stupa, there is a stone bench set around the circumference of the Skyspace for the viewers to sit on as they enjoy the sky view through the cut on the roof. The L.E.D lighting systems inside the chambers slightly alters with the viewers’ perception on the color of the sky. Changing light and weather conditions outside the chambers also have an effect on the viewers’ perception 3 .
Similar to James Turrel’s great art work, Richard Serra also put in place another great art work titled “Sequence”. Unlike the Three Gems, Sequence was created in the lobby of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Sequence is a 40 –foot figure eight. The site at which it is built was formally occupied by a fire station and a business collage that was facing Howard Street. While the “Three Gems” depends on the L.E.D light, changing light and weather conditions so as to alter with the viewers’ perception on the sky color, “Sequence” depends only with the weather changes. For instance, its steel slowly changes from black to shades of brown and orange when there is an alternating of a scorching sun and cooling fog. There is no fee charged for one to view the “Sequence”. This is aimed at attracting more viewers due to affordability and easy access to it.
Both James Turrel and Richard Serra have done unique works in the arts field. Similar to the Sequence, the Three Gems depends on the weather changes outside the chambers in order to alter with the viewer’s perception on the color while the sequence also depends on the weather changes to shift its color. However the “Three Germs” was created as a present while the “Sequence” was made as one of the ways of expansion of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Bibliography
Richard Serra: California Birth Index . 2016 .
Wil S. Hylton: How James Turrell Knocked the Art World Off Its Feet New York Times . 2013
Adcock, Craig, James Turrell: The Art of Light and Space, Berkeley/Los Angeles/Oxford : University of California Press, 1990.
