Color Perception and the Art of James Turrell

The author discusses James Turrell’s artworks in relation to contemporary disputes about the nature of color. The idea of Turrell’s pieces as “pure chromatic sensations” is implausible to perceptual psychologists who have adopted the ecological approach of J.J. Gibson. Such psychologists view visual sensations as mere symptoms of the stimulation of the photoreceptors in our retinae. Their idea goes against the traditional theory of color. The tendency of philosophers throughout history has been to take colors to be the exemplary instances of simple, unanalyzable qualities. However, the difficulties of proving that these qualities can be traced back to a set of material properties suggest that there is no coherent view on their ontological status. The author considers current efforts to address this problem, along with the relevance of these attempts to criticism of Turrell’s artworks.