Hard to believe it's been nearly a decade since the James Turrell retrospective "Knowing Light" graced the Henry Art Museum. Immediately establishing itself as one of, if not the, greatest modern art exhibit seen by me that decade. It's lasting impression even more deeply ingrained by having returned to the museum to further soak in the literally mind-altering luminosity of it's perceptual, hallucinogenic precision. 2013 sees a return of overviews of his work, in not one city, but three! The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, will all host retrospectives featuring distinctly different aspects of Turrell's work, all three combining to produce an encompassing overview of the artists singular creative vision. Hilarie M. Sheets bottles the significance and anticipation for the nationwide retrospective by "Paying Homage to James Turrell, Who Turns Light Into Art" and a major, nine page feature in the Sunday magazine "How James Turrell Knocked the Art World Off Its Feet" of the New York Times, while Amy Abrams gets to the fundamentals of "How We See" for Art in America. Notably, the LACMA exhibit, featuring the largest selection, spanning six decades of Turrell's work and covering over 33,000 square feet of gallery space will have a running time of nearly a year. So we all have absolutely no excuse to not catch this coast-to-coast retrospective by America's premier modern alchemist of material, form, space, time and light. Photo credit: Emily Duff
