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A Celestial Doctrine: James Turrell, Art, and Technology in Cold War Los Angeles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2022

AMANDA C. WATERHOUSE Open the ORCID record for AMANDA C. WATERHOUSE [Opens in a new window]
AMANDA C. WATERHOUSE*
Affiliation:
History Department, Indiana University. Email: amawater@iu.edu.
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Abstract

This article examines sculptor James Turrell's late 1960s Art & Technology residency at Garrett Corporation, an aerospace and defense subcontractor based in Los Angeles. It considers Turrell's early life, his participation in the residency through the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and his and collaborators’ subsequent production, to show that artists could interact with the Cold War military–industrial complex in ways that surpassed mere protest or complicity. Despite his political beliefs, Turrell's participation in the project embedded his sculptural practice in the Cold War political economy of the American state in ways that should expand scholarly definition and study of what constitutes foreign-policy practice and doctrine.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 5 , December 2022 , pp. 729 - 754
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press in association with the British Association for American Studies

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References

1 Anne Collins Goodyear, “The Relationship of Art to Science and Technology in the United States, 1957–1971: Five Case Studies,” PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 2002, 336, ProQuest UMI 3099453.

2 See the artist's website for more information about how he categorizes his work. James Turrell, “Work (Type),” at https://jamesturrell.com/work/type.

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19 Tomkins, 104.

20 Ibid.

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29 Tuchman, “Introduction,” 10, 12.

30 See Markusen, Ann, Hall, Peter, Campbell, Scott, and Dietrich, Sabina, Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, cited in Peter J. Westwick, “Introduction,” in Westwick, ed., Blue Sky Metropolis: The Aerospace Century in Southern California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 1–14, 2. See also Wayne Biddle, Barons of the Sky: From Early Flight to Strategic Warfare. The Story of the American Aerospace Industry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

31 Westwick, “Introduction,” 1, 3.

32 Ibid., 1.

33 Ibid., 1, 4.

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37 “Artists Use an Industrial Palette,” Business Week, 8 Nov. 1969, 96–100.

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39 Goodyear, “The Relationship of Art to Science and Technology,” 341.

40 See McCray, Making Art Work, 129–52; and Sabine Breitwieser, ed., E.A.T.: Experiments in Art and Technology (Salzburg: Museum der Moderne, 2015).

41 Kozloff, 74.

42 Catherine Wagley, “Closed Circuits: A Look Back at LACMA's First Art and Technology Initiative,” East of Borneo website, 11 May 2015, https://eastofborneo.org/articles/closed-circuits-a-look-back-at-lacmas-first-art-and-technology-initiative; Lee, Chronophobia, esp. 16–22.

43 Wagley.

44 Kozloff, 74.

45 James Turrell, “James Turrell Conversation – Episode 2: Art & Technology Collaborations of the 1960s–1970s,” conversation with Mark Booth, Spencer Museum of Art, 15 Sept. 2013, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEUoJUuTqyU.

46 Thomas, “The Aesthetics of Habitability,” 39, 47.

47 Jane Livingston, “Robert Irwin, James Turrell,” in A Report, 127–43, 128.

48 Conwell and Phillips, “DURATION PIECE,” 205.

49 Ibid., 206.

50 Drohojowska-Philp, Rebels, 204.

51 Livingston, 128.

52 Biographic elements for Wortz are from Thomas, 51–52.

53 Ibid., 56.

54 Poole, Earthrise, 13.

55 Oliver, To Touch the Face of God, 2.

56 Tribbe, Matthew D., No Requiem for the Space Age: The Apollo Moon Landings and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Oliver, 3–4. See also Tribbe, 14.

58 Robert Irwin, “AISTHESIS” interview, 2014; James Turrell, Spencer Museum interview, 2013.

59 Livingston, 128.

60 Robert Irwin in Livingston, 127.

61 Wilson, “Two California Artists Are Busy Exploring Inner Space.” The full quote references “experiments in sensory deprivation.”

62 Livingston, 134.

63 Ibid., 136, 137.

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67 Thomas, “The Aesthetics of Habitability,” 48; Killen and Andriopoulos, 9.

68 Killen and Andriopoulos, 12.

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70 James Turrell in Livingston, 130.

71 Livingston, 129–30.

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73 Wilson, “Two California Artists Are Busy Exploring Inner Space.”

74 Turrell in Livingston, 131, 132, original emphasis.

75 Irwin in Livingston, 127.

76 Wilson, “Two California Artists Are Busy Exploring Inner Space.”

77 Turrell in Livingston, 133.

78 Ibid., 130.

79 Ibid., 140.

80 Ibid., 130.

81 Edwin Pouncey, “Laboratories of Light: Psychedelic Light Shows,” in Christoph Grunenberg and Jonathan Harris, eds., Summer of Love: Psychedelic Art, Social Crisis and Counterculture in the 1960s (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005), 155–62.

82 As discussed above, the artists were not unique in combining counterculture and science, though many who did so “dismissed examples of science and technology that struck them as hulking, depersonalized, or militarized,” which Garrett arguably embodied. See Kaiser and McCray, “Introduction,” 2.

83 Wilson, “Two California Artists Are Busy Exploring Inner Space.”

84 Turrell in Livingston, 140; Tomkins, Lives of the Artists, 109; Drohojowska-Philp, Rebels, 204.

85 Thomas, “The Aesthetics of Habitability,” 71.

86 Wilson, “Two California Artists Are Busy Exploring Inner Space.”

87 Robert Irwin, “AISTHESIS” interview, 2014.

88 James Turrell, “AISTHESIS” interview, 2014.

89 Livingston, 139.

90 Miller, James, Tektite 2: Scientists in the Sea (Washington, DC: US Department of the Interior, 1971), VIII-9-11Google Scholar.

91 Ed Wortz in Livingston, 143. The “hot-rodders” term is likely a reference to Irwin's experience customizing automobiles, which critics have seen as informing his “discs” artwork as alluding to southern California car culture. Thomas, 94, 110.

92 Livingston, 141–42.

93 Thomas theorizes the notion of “habitability” and the many ways that it informed the work of Turrell, Irwin, and Wortz, as well as Larry Bell (and how Sheila Levrant de Bretteville posed a feminist critique of it). In his analysis of this conference, Thomas argues that habitability was “a methodological concern central to the postwar social sciences.” Thomas, 117.

94 Ibid., 118.

95 Ibid., 159.

96 Ibid., 76, 79. Thomas also outlines other artistic strategies and philosophies that influenced Turrell's practice.

97 See Conwell and Philips, “DURATION PIECE,” 186–247. See also James Merle Thomas, “Revising California Minimalism/s: Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and the Feminist Critique of Habitability,” in Thomas, “The Aesthetics of Habitability,” 218–66.

98 Goodyear, “The Relationship of Art to Science and Technology,” 399.

99 Turrell in Livingston, 140.

100 Ibid.

101 Nancy Spector, “James Turrell: Skyspace I,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, at www.guggenheim.org/artwork/4089. For more information on this type of form see James Turrell, “Skyspaces,” at https://jamesturrell.com/work/type/skyspace.

102 “About,” Roden Crater, at http://rodencrater.com/about.

103 James Turrell, “Perceptual Cells,” at https://jamesturrell.com/work/type/perceptual-cell.

104 Kozloff, “The Multimillion Dollar Art Boondoggle,” 75, original emphasis.

105 McCray, Making Art Work, 197–98.

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109 William Wilson, “L.A. ‘Art, Technology’ Prepares for Japan Expo: Art. Technology,’” Los Angeles Times, 28 Aug. 1969, E1.

110 Goodyear, 282.

111 Conwell and Phillips, “DURATION PIECE,” 217.

112 David Antin, “Art and the Corporations,” ARTnews, 70, 5 (Sept. 1971), 22–26, 52–56.

113 William Wilson, “‘A&T’ Catalog Paints Picture of Struggle,” Los Angeles Times, 8 Aug. 1971, R57.

114 Kozloff, “The Multimillion Dollar Art Boondoggle,” 72.

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118 Quote is by Maurice Tuchman, from an interview with Anne Collins Goodyear, 2 Feb. 1999. Quoted in Goodyear, “The Relationship of Art to Science and Technology,” 408.

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121 Richard Serra in Gail R. Scott, “Richard Serra,” in A Report, 298–305, 300.

122 Goodyear, “The Relationship of Art to Science and Technology,” 356.

123 Wilson, “‘A&T’ Catalog Paints Picture of Struggle.”

124 Goodyear, “The Relationship of Art to Science and Technology,” 356.

125 Kozloff, Max, “Industrial Complex,” Artforum, 51, 1 (Sept. 2012)Google Scholar, quoted in Wagley, “Closed Circuits.”

126 Antin, “Art and the Corporations.”

127 Ibid.