North Adams, Mass.

James Turrell (b. 1943) is to Light & Space art what Picasso was to Cubism. His 1966 projections of intense light into corners of walls to create glowing, floating illusions of cubes were the “Desmoiselles d’Avignon” of the style. That’s an inexact parallel, for Robert Irwin —15 years Mr. Turrell’s senior, also a Southern California artist and, like him, a recipient of one of the first MacArthur Foundation grants given to artists—was the other pioneering Light & Space artist. Yet Mr. Turrell’s global reach (he has completed major projects in Spain and China), not to mention his continuing—and gargantuan—Roden Crater project in the Arizona desert, put him in a class by himself.

“James Turrell: Into the Light,” on the vast campus of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art—known simply as Mass MoCA—with at least one piece from each decade of the artist’s career, which begain in 1966, is a kind of retrospective and, for those not familiar with his work, a primer.

James Turrell: Into the Light
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art

On view, at least through 2025

That the artist is the son of an aeronautical engineer father and a Quaker mother are important in understanding his work. He’s an experienced pilot who sees the Earth and sky differently from most of us: in a word, phenomenologically. He’s also a former “lapsed Quaker” who now describes himself as a “relapsed Quaker” with a belief in Quakerism’s “inner light” and the idea that God is manifest in every one of us. (This partly explains the exhibition title.) With Mr. Turrell, these are no airy-fairy beliefs, but rather the underpinnings of a quiet ferocity permeating everything he does. (A half-century ago, I played in a couple of pickup basketball games with Mr. Turrell, who was a varsity athlete at his small college. He was in another zone on the court, fiercely unkind to my mediocre opposition.)

All of Mr. Turrell’s works are somehow at once typical and sui generis. In “Perfectly Clear (Ganzfeld)” (1991), one ascends (after donning blue paper booties to protect the floor) black-carpeted steps to enter a large, bright white chamber whose floor rises almost imperceptibly toward the back wall—which is less like a wall than an entry into some kind of deep space. That back wall slowly changes colors, as does the light in the entire chamber. For painters, there’s a Rothko-gone-to-heaven feel. Immediately in front of that changing color-field wall is an invisible drop in the floor; a sensor that sets off an alarm prevents injury to viewers who get too close to it. In “Hind sight” (1984), another room, everything is pitch black, a beyond-black that gives you a frightening (or peaceful, depending on your mindset) hint of what the second term in Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness” is all about. Viewers use railings to find their way in the dark to seats, where they may sit for 15 minutes before being called out by the guard.

James Turrell at Roden Crater

James Turrell at Roden Crater

Photo: James Turrell/MASS MoCA

The other seven pieces in this meta-exhibition are similarly enveloping. Across the campus from Mass MoCA’s Building 6, which “Into the Light” occupies, is “C.A.V.U.” (a pilot’s term meaning “ceiling and visibility unlimited”), Mr. Turrell’s latest “Skyspace.” It’s a round opening in the ceiling of a repurposed concrete water tank—40 feet tall and 40 feet in diameter—that makes a section of the sky into the purest minimalist painting you’ll ever see. I didn’t see this one because the area was cordoned off that day for some asphalt paving. But I’ve seen more than one “Skyspace,” and could glibly say “if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.” You haven’t, of course—and, if anything, the simultaneous particularity and universality of his works of art and your perception of them is Mr. Turrell’s point.

‘Dissolve (Curved Wide Glass)’ (2017)

‘Dissolve (Curved Wide Glass)’ (2017)

Photo: Florian Holzherr/MASS MoCA

No one I know of has ever accused his works of being ugly, or regretted taking the trouble to see them. They nevertheless contain some philosophical contradictions. For instance, they weigh a lot, a whole lot—all that hidden or de-emphasized architectural support—which belies the idea of immaterial light being their medium. The meditative potential of Mr. Turrell’s work is contradicted by Mass MoCA’s rule that each group admitted to the exhibition has but 45 minutes to experience the installations. When I was there on a sparsely attended weekday, nobody was told, “Move along, folks,” but there was a slight—very slight—feeling of carnival midway attractions. When does pure beauty detached even from Mass MoCA’s loose ambience of art history register as either saccharine or a simple “Wow!” experience similar to a great spa or, on the more spectacular side, a Fourth of July fireworks show?

‘Afrum (Projection)’ (1967)

‘Afrum (Projection)’ (1967)

Photo: Florian Holzherr/MASS MoCA

Finally, there is—at least to me—a sublimated aggression to “Into the Light.” While it’s not on the order of the famous brouhaha at a 1971 Guggenheim Museum exhibition when Daniel Buren hung a long vertical banner of his trademark stripes from the top of the museum’s rotunda and obscured the work of other artists installed on the ramp, it does lend the unapologetically physical art in the rest of Mass MoCA the collective air of a yard sale.

'C.A.V.U.,' (2021)

'C.A.V.U.,' (2021)

Photo: Arthur Evans/MASS MoCA

All that said, no other American artist is currently working on Mr. Turrell’s scale or ambition to create transcendent beauty. I was told that after the conclusion of a preview of this newest “Skyspace,” when Mr. Turrell, recognizable with his great white beard, rose to leave, he was given a standing ovation. He deserved it.

—Mr. Plagens is an artist and writer in New York.