"This is the light we are given
Every evening we unfold the light
And every morning fold it back
To return the blue sky"
—James Turrell from Speaking for the LightNot unlike the grand Roden Crater or the ambitious light installations he is best known for, Turrell’s First Light is monumental in scope and concept. Consisting of 20 subtly misty aquatints, once installed they are of a scale rarely seen in printmaking. First Light takes as its ideological starting point the artist’s first body of light works, the Projection Pieces, which he began in 1967 and of which only a few light spaces were realized. Though there are conceptual and visual threads from these physical works to the prints themselves, the artist did not see them as illustrations of, or even about, his related works. He considered them active, luminous, and conceptually in line with his light installations, thus the most significant works of his printmaking oeuvre.
Indeed, it was Turrell’s specific choice of the aquatint medium that gives the works the visual impact and lightness achieved in his installations. In his own words Turrell explains that the process can “evoke the atmospheric effect of the projection…the aquatint technique was used as the purest, most light-catching form of etching, one which could dispense with line, and instead allow for the subtle allover tonal effects present in the light works.”
The imagery in the series is organized into five themes- squares, triangles, columns, rectangles, and parallelograms. These primarily abstract images are evocative of light pouring into the corner of an empty dark room. Morphing from one shape to another and from sheet to sheet, the contrast from dark to light activate their respective spaces. First Light is a tour de force that gives light an architectural yet ethereal quality, pushing the boundaries of the printmaking in a way only Turrell could accomplish.
