Why Kanye’s New Spiritual Work Keeps Borrowing From James Turrell

VOX.COM
By Constance Grady

A man walks through James Turrell’s installation “Aural” at the Jewish Museum, April 2018. Photo by Wolfgang Kumm/picture alliance via Getty Images

Earlier this year, Kanye West announced his intention to spend the rest of his career making only Christian music. And to establish the aesthetic of this new spiritual stage in his career, Kanye is turning to one of the world’s greatest quasi-spiritual artists: James Turrell, whose medium is light. James Turrell’s fingerprints are all over the work Kanye has been putting out in 2019. Kanye’s new IMAX movie Jesus Is King was shot at Roden Crater, the site of the magnum opus art installation Turrell has been working on for the past 45 years, which Turrell describes as “a gateway to observe light, time, and space.” “I look at light as a material,” Turrell said to Interview magazine in 2011. “It is physical. To the Quaker magazine Friends Journal, he describes his Skyspaces as “not that far from making something that is visual ministry for people in art.” [More]