Lisa Haegele

James Turrell�s Danaë: Toying with the Traditional

 

 

 

         

                                     

 

 

 

 

James Turrell’s installation Danaë, located in Pittsburgh’s contemporary art museum The Mattress Factory, stages an intermingling of light and darkness that challenges Plato’s, Kant’s, and Hegel’s traditional aesthetic theories. In order to view the installation, the viewer must walk through two entirely dark hallways, feeling his way around into the large room around the corner. Upon entering the room, the viewer is immediately struck by the large, mesmerizing screen on the opposite wall. The bluish rectangular screen has a hypnotic effect that invites its viewer to slowly approach it, where one might see the small dots that compose a television screen, or simply the fluorescent blue of a painting. Contrary to original expectation, however, the screen reveals itself to be merely an empty white room that is lit by a black light, leaving the viewer with a mixed sensation of surprise and humility.

 

In light of its artful trickery, Turrell’s Danaë apparently teases Plato’s idea that art is deceptive. While Plato criticizes art for its deceptive nature, in that it is mere imitation of a superior, absolute truth, Turrell openly stages a deception in his work of art, becoming the “illusionist” that Plato denounces (“Republic” 17). This “exaggerated” deception lies in the sudden and humbling realization on the part of the viewer that what he sees contradicts his initial expectation; this differs, however, from Plato’s idea of a deceiving art, which does not necessarily involve a sudden, shocking experience, but rather a gradual shift “two generations” away from reality (“Republic” 16). Turrell thus deceives the viewer in a very literal sense of the term, making a mockery of a more traditional view of art through its blatant exaggeration in modern art form.

 

The installation evokes a sensation of the sublime, rather than the beautiful, through its darkness and alluring grandeur. Fear is immediately aroused in the viewer when he must find his way through the complete darkness of the hallways to the light of the installation. The viewer’s eyes gradually adapt to darkness, which, as Burke mentions, is a painful sensation that is evocative of the sublime (Burke 132). When one reaches the room with the installation, one is awestruck by the mysterious blue screen that seems to beckon the viewer to approach it, to follow the light in an enveloping darkness. This sudden appearance of light, as well as the vastness of the dark room and the silence within it, constitutes the sublimity of Turrell’s installation. The sublime takes hold of the viewer at the entryway to the installation, since one is amazed by the alluring power of the large bluish screen and yet also feels threatened and fascinated by the surrounding darkness.

 

The blue screen invites the viewer to become a sort of detective, as he is tempted to approach it in order to figure out what this mysterious screen or painting looks like in close proximity. The viewer may anticipate a number of outcomes as to what the screen is: a large television screen that may suddenly turn on as one comes close to it, a painting illuminated by a lamp behind it, or even a large blue slate suspended in the air. While walking toward the screen in anticipation, the viewer transgresses the sensitive boundary of the sublime, and the screen loses its initial power. This supports the Kantian notion that one must retain a certain amount of distance in order for the particular object to have a sublime effect. In Danaë, the spell of the sublime is broken when one realizes that, instead of carrying any interesting or profound meaning, the “screen” is literally an empty white room, devoid of meaning. The apparent banality of the outcome is magnified through the smell of the paint in the room (which may or may not still be present) and the not so perfect painting job, visible through its unsmooth finishes. The small black light lamp adds to the cheapening of the effect as a simple commodity that is accessible to everyone, thereby demystifying the effect of the initially mysterious light. By encouraging the viewer to transgress the boundary of the sublime, the installation challenges the notion of the sublime, showing that behind it, there’s only an empty room. 

 

Although the very name of the installation itself suggests a deeper meaning that may be related to the mythological figure Danaë, Turrell’s Danaë hardly fulfills its expectation. It is interesting to note that Danaë is the title of two paintings depicting the mythological figure, one by Titian, a 16th century Renaissance painter, and the other by John William Waterhouse in the 18th century. In Titian’s painting, Danaë’s impregnation by a golden rain is illustrated, and in Waterhouse’s painting, she is shown holding her child. Such images of pregnancy and motherhood in these traditional works of art contradict Turrell’s presentation of “Dana딗rather than depicting pregnancy or any other such moment of fulfillment, Turrell illustrates vacancy, which highlights his mockery of traditional art that is typically “pregnant” with a particular, in this case historical, deeper meaning. At the same time, then, Turrell probes Hegel’s notion that art should no longer merely be contemplated as an end in itself, but rather that it should serve a specific purpose that lies outside of itself (Hegel 61). Through his Danaë Turrell seems to debunk Hegel’s claim that art’s function is to convey a higher meaning. Unlike Titian’s or Waterhouse’s Danaë, Turrell’s own Danaë is one that has been stripped of its signification.[1]

 

 Turrell’s Danaë probes the traditional notions of art as deceptive, as a mediator of higher meaning, and of the sublime. By putting such notions into question, the artist paves the way for a new understanding of art and its potential function as a critic of the traditional.

 

           

 


[1]Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danae