Word is slowly getting around. Bavaria has a new museum. It is the most beautiful of the Free State. This building, which stands on Domberg high above Freising, opens up visual axes through its interior and to the outside, to heaven and earth. The directors of the proud competition in the state capital can only dream of that. In fact, this museum is not brand new. But the remodeling of the old diocesan museum, which had to be closed years ago due to fire protection problems, has gone so boldly and far-reaching that one almost wishes Mother Church herself could open her windows like this and let in light, air and space.
Given the inventory from which the Catholic Church draws, it goes without saying that the exhibits inside are exquisite. The fact that the presentation is as modern as it is emotionally captivating is thanks to its director Christoph Kurzeder and his team. James Turrell has managed to make the house a kind of “navel of the world”. Art lovers have long struggled to bring one of the coveted works by the American, who himself looks a bit like God the Father on the ceiling of the Sixtina, to Munich for the public. Without success. Now people are making a pilgrimage to Freising instead.
James Turrell was only there once for the planning, but he dealt in detail with the location and the house chapel of the former Freising boys’ seminary and today’s museum, in the place of which his “Chapel for Luke and his scribe Lucius the Cyrene” now stands. The 79-year-old tells in a sonorous voice what his art is about. Above his left breast, his shirt has the word “Light” emblazoned on it where other people have the logo of some sports brand.
The artist James Turrell visiting the Domberg Freising in the Diözesanmuseum, planning the Chapel for Luke – with the director of the house, Christoph Kurzder (right), the Munich architect Walter Achatz, who implemented the chapel (2nd from right) , the deputy museum director Carmen Roll, and Turrell’s gallery owner Wolfgang Häusler (2nd from left).
(Photo: Freising Diocesan Museum/Thomas Dashuber)
SZ: In Central Europe, the importance of religions is dwindling, but the longing for spirituality is booming. Can art replace religion?
James Turrell: First of all, you can’t imagine religion without art. The Catholic faith in particular seems inextricably linked to me, but I myself come from a Quaker family. Think of Bezalel, the very first artist mentioned in Scripture. Moses commissioned him to design the tent sanctuary and the tabernacle.
Does the church need the artist?
Artists have been the handmaidens of the religious class for centuries. They have always been financially supported by the Church. As, by the way, the scientists were the maids of the warrior class. Just remember what the physicists Heisenberg and Einstein did by developing nuclear weapons. But back to the church: it was elementary for everything that developed in painting in Europe. The phenomenon of private collectors hasn’t been around for long. And the artists have often rubbed off against their church clients and built a point into many a work of art.
Whoever enters her chapel has to cross a threshold at the end of a staircase without a railing. That throws a lot of people off balance. In Bavarian folk belief, it is said that such thresholds are used to ward off demons – they cannot jump up. What is Saint Luke’s Threshold?
That remains my secret. But as I said, the artist sometimes incorporates small special features…
Inside, the visitor has an experience of infinity. How does this work?
There is no horizon there. Imagine it as if you were in a snowstorm, at some point you lose the feeling for up and down, in the end maybe even for yourself. This is called a “whiteout”.
James Turrell visiting Domberg Freising.
(Photo: Freising Diocesan Museum/Thomas Dashuber)
But there is light everywhere in your works, you speak of “Ganzfelder”.
But there is also a harmless way. Ideally, when you read a book, you become completely absorbed in this world. Then people walk past them and you don’t even notice them. Or think of the people who sit next to you in the car on the highway and sing at the top of their lungs. They’re completely submerged too. One just hopes that they are still in the here and now with a little attention left.
Sure, otherwise it rattles.
I agree. We are spiritual beings having physical experiences. That is why we are often hardly in this world. Then the literary world becomes more real than the one in which you sit and read the book.
Quite a few visitors leave the Luke Chapel fundamentally changed. A lady said, for example, that she was grateful that she had now found her epitaph. Do such reactions touch you?
Art should look just like that. I think music is the most expressive art form that does that best of all. Think of the works of German composers such as Beethoven or Wagner!
Or Bach?
Very much! And that is exactly what visual arts should be able to do. I want viewers to enter the painting by going into the chapel space. It is painted with light. In my Skyspaces, I pursue the idea that where the opening to the sky is, I want the viewer to step through to another pictorial level.
Why did you dedicate the chapel to Saint Luke?
It was already in the original building. So I didn’t have to invent anything new. And Luke is important to me; as an apostle, he essentially gave us Christianity and theology. Even if my name is James, so I was named after Jakob.
When planning the new chapel in the old one. It was designed for the boys’ boarding school on the Domberg.
(Photo: Freising Diocesan Museum/Thomas Dashuber)
Your birthday is on the same day as Luke of Cyrene, which is, so to speak, in the subtitle of this work.
Yes, “Luke the scribe”. Incidentally, many terms are derived from him in English. Also less desirable states – like “lukewarm”, ie lukewarm.
You got your pilot’s license at the age of 16. Did you already want to get to the bottom of the secret of heaven?
We humans always feel the up better than the down. That’s actually interesting. When you’re up there as a pilot – and especially when you’re looking down at your own home, which is tiny below you – it does something to you. Pilots shouldn’t be expected to do things like mow the lawn or clean the bathroom. That seems too trivial and small to them. But today the sky is my canvas.
Was that your motivation back then?
The penchant for flying also runs in my family. My father was a flight engineer and a friend of his worked with Howard Huges (the legendary aviation pioneer and film producer, editor’s note) together and these men have always been kind of reaching for the stars. Well, or like Huges, they occasionally aimed to impress women like Jean Harlow with it. But at first I only flew provisions.
And you were never scared up there, so detached from the earth?
Flying isn’t about fear, it’s all about the high. Entering this realm above you is like a dream, almost like leaving your own body. This is not yet a spiritual state, but it brings you close to it.
Is that desirable?
I used to be able to take part in astronaut training. Weightlessness is a unique experience. Remember all those early astronauts – they started out as race car drivers and fighter jet pilots – and they almost all ended up being some kind of religious nutcases. When your body loses its burden, you become enlightened.
Is it really that simple?
Well, anyway, I share a bit of this feeling of weightlessness with people in my art. And I find that intoxicating. Humanity is at a point where it is leaping into the unknown. Even if some are afraid – as with the first touches in a new sexual relationship – it is all about one thing: the intoxication of free fall.
a navel? A vision of light at the end of the tunnel? A Chapel for Luke by James Turrell.
(Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa)
Is Lukas’ chapel something like the navel of the world? The mythical omphalos around which all world events revolve, as it has been called since antiquity?
I appreciate that you feel that way. Of course I hope for such an effect. Sometimes I succeed. But whether someone feels that always depends on the sensitivity of the visitor.
How important is the work on the Domberg in your work?
Do you have children? It’s like asking someone what their favorite child is – you can’t, you shouldn’t, answer that. I alone had 210 solo exhibitions in 54 years. But I am very happy with the chapel. And I’m very glad that I was able to build it at this point.
How so?
The area you live in is fascinating. Bavaria and Austria with its golden, baroque splendor. And so much has been created in Germany. Also dark – but also so much powerful, creative, clever. Sometimes even all in one. Think of Werner von Braun, who let us fly to the moon – with rocket technology, of all things. Or think of Gutenberg, who made sure that everyone can share in knowledge, and of Martin Luther.
Do you also have dark hours?
Sure, like everyone. Even the saints. I understand how we humans use the light: we use it to reveal something we cannot see. But as an artist, I understand light differently. For me it is the revelation itself. I don’t need to explain to you that light is also our most essential nourishment – I won’t go into detail about the vitamin D household now. Anyone who has had a near-death experience describes it in the vocabulary of light, which ends up shining golden and glorious.
Christmas is celebrated these days, the festival of light. Does Christmas mean anything to you?
But yes. Even if we have deformed it into a commercial festival. I celebrate the birth of Christ.