>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin with a look at one of the most important events in the art world. we talk about the venice biennale. >> it's a form of perceptual jim fast i cans in which we practice to understand what we don't understand and that's what i love about art and what i think would encourage people to become familiar with art. not to go there to learn now go there to lose themselves and see things that don't utterly make sense. >> rose: we conclude with an important artist, james turrell. his show is currently on display at the guggenheim museum. >> ideas and thoughts are cheap. you have many of them but it's actually pulling it off, actually making these things, realizing them. and as an artist you have to manifest and i don't get to count the things that i haven't done but that i thought of that was terrific.

>> rose: the venice biennale and james turrell when we continue. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose.

>> rose: the venice biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition held every two years in veps any, italy. more than 158 artists from over 88 countries are participating this year. for the first time, the vatican has sponsored its own pavilion, kelly kroll of the "wall street journal" wrote "the venice biennale has become the olympics of the contemporary art world. instead of medals, artists compete for fame on the global art field." joining me now is massimiliano gioni, he is the director of the 2013 venice biennale, he's also associate director and director of special exhibition at new york's new museum. also here, sarah de-, the artist representing the united states at the benal known for her tiny found objects, she was awarded a macarthur grant in 2003. this year's exhibition explores

the possibility of knowing everything. sde. i am pleased to have them both at this table for the first time. welcome. what is it really about? >> well, it was founded in 1985 and every two years it has brought -- 1895 and has brought contemporary art to venice, one is an international show and the other is the national pavilions and every two years it's an occasion to look at the most vital and contemporary art today and unique occasion to look at the global state of contemporary art. >> rose: i was going to say -- my question to you would be at the conclusion of the biennale in venice, what would you come away with? what would you understand about art of the moment? >> that's a good question. i don't think any art show can'm compass that. a good show is always very

complex and you come out -- it simmers and you understand that at its best the distance from the show. >> rose: time and distance? >> time and distance. i think people underestimate how really strong visual art actually grows on you over time. like a novel. there's an experience of seeing hit in the moment but it's partially a kind of veting that happens over time and what you remember from, you know, anything from a week to a month to five years is really how you know a show is good. >> rose: can it set in motion things a that will deeply affect the world of start >> yes. for example, there's a beautiful show there from 1969 cure rated by harold zamon, or was cure rated by harold zamon. massimiliano can probably speak about it better than i but it's a show that was so strong and so important in people's memory that they have recreated that

show in and of itself in the exhibition and harold zamon is in some ways -- he was the first creator, if you will, of independent curating and really i think he started the -- is that correct? >> rose: is art an international language? >> well, there is -- >> rose: the way music is? >> yes and no, it is an international language and an event like that venice biennale define grammar of the moment but i think it's also a practice in which we learn to co-exist with difference and diversity and, in fact, again, the venice biennale because of the pavilions don't offer a flat picture of the world. what i love about the venice biennale as a viewer-- and i've been going there since i was 19, since 1993, is that you -- >> rose: a couple years ago was it? >> (laughs) a little longer. but in idea that you go into an exhibition to see different ways

of being contemporary today. you know, you go to the venice biennale and there is an iraq pavilion and a lebanese pavilion and chinese and being contemporary in each of these nationstor vatican is not the same as being contemporary in the united states. >> rose: you said the national pavilions are incredibly polyphonic. being contemporary today in india is not the same as being contemporary in bahrain. >> and that's exactly what i mean in terms of moving away from an idea of contemporary art. we do become more international by speaking the international language of contemporary art but i think art is also a place where we practice diversity and learn to coexist with difference. and that's quite exciting. at least for me. >> rose: france and germany switched pavilions? >> it's a very nice idea. this idea that the pavilions and their boundaries and this idea that there is a center even in one nation can give a voice has

been questioned for quite a while so it's something they've been trying to do for a long time that's what henri who did the french pavilion told me they were trying to do it and there was diplomacy and politics and they'd never been able to achieve it and it's a nice idea that -- and the german pavilion there's an important india artist representing germany. >> rose: the vatican has its first pavilion? >> it does. yes. it's also interesting because the geography of art has been changing so for example if you go where some of the national pavilions are located nearly half of them is where you find the picture of what the cold war world used to look like so you have the united states, germany, france, spain and then you move and you have the pavilions of

the new nation today so there is china, now this years there argentina and the vatican which are neighbors which i think is quite significant because, of course, we didn't know that the pope was going to be archian. yes, the vatican wanted to have a pavilion and they restored the space and it's a new permanent pavilion. i think it's a desire to start again a dialogue with contemporary art. it's also -- >> rose: the vatican wants to start a dialogue with cob temporary art? >> i think it's also interesting to know that biennale doesn't approach countries. we don't go after countries and say "open a pavilion." the policy is if a country approaches us and is recognized by the government of italy and the united nations we say yes. so that also guarantees a very complicated and rich texture so when the vatican approached us-- the technical name is the holy

see approached us and they bring a different understanding of what the present is like and what contemporary art is like. consistently they understand using art for publicity. (laughs) they understood that for a few centuries. >> rose: exactly right. and more than that. this is an easy job you have, righting? no challenges, it's sort of -- >> well, as an italian i have to pretend it's very easy. (laughs) it's not easy but it's exciting. >> rose: what's hard about it? you have a year to plan it? >> you have a year to plan it which is not a lot of time for an exhibition. my part is hundred thousand square meters and a little more and then there are all the national pavilions so it's the largest exhibition in the world and then the finances are difficult as in every business at the moment and so a lot of my job decides thinking of the exhibition is also to raise the funds to make it happen and thank god i don't have to interfere with the pavilions which is a great contribution to

the show because there is my point of view and there are all these different points of view of each nation so it's difficult but as many difficult things, it's exciting. >> rose: what's the encyclopedic palace? >> well, encyclopedic palace is a strange object. i'm not even sure if it's an art work but there was the point of titling the entire biennale after it. it's preserved at the foe kault museum in new york. it was built by an american car mechanic in the '50s and he dreplgt of an marge their museum and he called it encyclopedic palace and his idea was that this museum would house the entire knowledge of the world. he never built it but he built it with plastic columns so it's a complete fantasy but he was so convinced of this idea that he took out a patent and i thought starting with this object -- >> rose: took out a patent? >> yes, i thought starting with this object was the way to

reflect by the venice biennale because it's a way to see the world and also a way to question the assumptions about who the artist is. in this show there are plenty of professional artists but plenty of outsider artists, people who were not artists, carl gustav jung, there are philosophers, scientists, dropouts. so i wanted to shake a bit of the definition of what the artist is and i don't know if sze is happy to be the show or not. >> i love being in the show. i think one of the things that is interesting about that premise for me is that when i was thinking about us being on this show together is that i think some ways for me what's interesting about the show is that it's about the idea of a museum very much and for me my pavilion was about the idea of a studio space. so how do you make a place that you come to about the behavior

of collecting and creating almost as much as the presentation of it. so when you go to a show you think about what it is -- how the idea of museums came about. i think the reference to cabinets of curiosity, the urge, the human urge, actually, to collect, to -- and then to present and, you know, in my case, you know i really feel like i tried to make the pavilion a place where you felt like you were going a studio space. where it was the location of making. and i think for me that was very interesting in this by eny'all in that it wasn't necessarily about being presented objects and being told this is important now you're in a biennale, you should know that this is what's important right now but really an examination of how we behave, how we value objects, how we value physical representations of history and culture. >> rose: what did you major in in college? >> i majored in art. >> rose: oh, you did. you didn't. >> well, in art history, yes. >> rose: i thought somewhere i

read you majored in literature. >> well, the faculty in italy is called it will literacy and philosophy. >> rose: what is the magic of start >> i don't think there is one way to get to art. for me it was -- the most exciting part of it is that it was my own field, it wasn't something that i learned at school or -- >> rose: it was not your field? >> well, it was something i had to learn on my own and that it wasn't taught to me, particularly contemporary art in school, it wasn't taught to me by my family. it was a space of freedom that i was very excited about and i always want to repeat that the most exciting aspect of art is more -- the experience of not understanding. the experience of being faced with an o@/5u that is not fully making sense? that preplts us with an experience of strangeness every time and i think that's actually what makes it exciting.

an italian philosopher, umberto echo said art is a form of perceptual gymnastics. >> rose: he's a novelist. >> and a philosopher. he said art is gymnastics in which we practice to understand what we don't understand. and i think that's what i love about art and also what i think would encourage people to come -- to become familiar with art. not to go there to learn now go there to lose themselves in things that don't necessarily make sense. (laughs) >> rose: why did you become an artist? >> i think for me it was something that i did second nature all my life and maybe resisted in some ways because i was always -- was thought of as the artist. but i think that in relation to your question in the show, i think, you know, one of the things that was interesting is this opening and, you know, i talked about in the terms of the sprawl of the number of countries that have come into the biennale but also the opening up of the boundaries of where the biennale is held, you

know, the locations where it's held. one of the things i tried do with the pavilion is to actually do works that were unidentified as being part of the american pavilion that showed up, that disappeared, that happened on their own time and to draw people and have them question is this an art work? is this not an art work. rather than to walk into the american pavilion and say "this is the art work, this is on the pedestal, this is framed" but to draw people in who might not go into the jardine and who might not go to moma to look at our work but to have them question and start thinking about where the art begins, where it ends, where it spilled out into real life. >> rose: you entitled your installation "triple point." >> triple point is a reference to a phrase in science and i often try to borrow phrases that exist in other subjects and place them a different context in a similar way that i do with objects themselves, whether you

read them differently perhaps in a more poetic way. so triple point is is the exact temperature where a substance exists in three states. so with water it would be solid being ice, liquid being water and steam. so this location where something exists at many states at once that is in flux that is unidentifiable in its actual form. >> rose: i've been waiting to do this to you. (laughter) >> rose: to him? >> rose: to you. (laughs) to you. richard serra, my friend who's been on this program a number of times, this is what he told andrea scott in the "new yorker" about you. he believes you are changing the potential of sculpture and that seeing your social work like seeing pollock in space. there's a particular sensibility, a braveness of color, a sensitivity for line. here we have a woman who's figured out a way to make architecture part of the whole. is because on this program he's talked about architecture as art

or not as art. to hear him say that about you, wow. >> it's a huge honor. he's obviously an incredible phenomenal artist and i saw him install a work on site when i was undergraduate in yale and i saw it go up in physical space and i saw and i saw how he used the space. how he made decisions on site. i walked by them to do my art history class each day and then got to the live with the piece because i was on my way to art history everyday after it went up and how -- >> rose: what did you think about it everyday you walked by? >> of course. and that's why i like that do commissions in spaces that are not art spaces because i was very privileged as an undergraduate to live with art work that were not mr. n places that you went to to see art but that you passed by and you learned to know over time in casual ways and time you spent with them to go see in the

context of daily life. so this piece changed not only that location but it changed the whole trajectory of getting from your dorm to the location and i think that changed all of the negative space in between. so he taught me that among many things. just how to, i think, sculpt the space that is not the sculpture itself but what is around it. but he saw work early on that i had exhibited in new york and found out that he was a fan, which i -- some people were surprised just in terms of physical mass and weight but interesting, i think, in some ways they're the opposite. >> rose: this is about some images i want you to speak to. this is from -- >> this is the encyclopedic palace. it's a piece that gives the title to the show and it's this imaginary museum that was never realized but was dreamt of by this car mechanic.

and it's the opening room in the arsenale. >> rose: you said i like that fact that it's an object that contains a particular story and i like the name of the -- like the idea of naming the biennale after a specific object and not just a random idea. >> i didn't want the biennale to be about myself. even though it's many levels about my obsessions and it's a very obsess i show but i wanted the show to be about this drive to knowledge and about the way in which we get to know ourself and the world around us through images so that's why i wanted to stewart a concrete object which is the story of this individual who only built this thing all his life. >> rose: the next is cindy sherman. >> i sin the ayes have ited her to do something unusual because i invited her not to show her work but to work on creating an exhibition within the exhibition and an exhibition that would

give access to the source material and the inspirations of the practice. so these are images from her collection of photo albums. she collects photo album she is buys in flea markets so the exhibition is a walk inside the head of cindy sherman and particularly reflection on dolls and puppets and idols and how we use dolls and these are different actors wearing costumes in the collections of photo albums. >> does she personify what you call the image society? >> she personifys a way in which artists have engaged with image society. she has transferred herself over and over into a gallery of characters. i love the fact that she's been making self-portraits that never look like herself which is quite incredible so i wanted with her very much to -- with this exhibition within the exfwigs engage the theme of portraiture

and make us understand how we can represent ourselves in a society in which representation has become a form of inflation or almost a form of possession. >> rose: the next one is walter memaria, apollo's ecstasy. >> walter maria was the first artist i invited knob the show because i thought this is going to be the only time i have the honor to work with him because he's such a legend. we live almost three streets from each other here in new york it took nine months to have access to the studio. many letters and he was an pis lair novel and finally when we finished the piece, that's the last room in the arsenale. >> rose: artists can drive you crazy, can't they? >> well, i cannot say in the front of an artist but when you ask me what's difficult about my job -- >> rose: dealing with artists! (laughter) senate to >> you know, we have a wonderful

piece in the exhibition by richard serra and when you asked me about what's difficult, imagine moving a richard serra piece from the water. the piece is 16,000 tons which for rachel is not much but still you have to lift it with compressed air. >> rose: the next one is rudolph steiner. jump in at any time. >> he was another central figure the show because he was a philosopher, a self-proclaimed prophet and all his life he gave lectures. he gave more than 5,000 lectures and he made these drawings and so there are -- i joke that it's powerpoint slides for his theory of the universe and there are 54 in the exhibition all from the year 1923. >> rose: next the is bruce nellman who i've been begging to be on the show for a hundred years >> this is an older piece by bruce nellman that i asked him to present in the second last room and it's a beautiful piece

in which it's a self-portrait so the show starts with carlos jung and his red book, which is sort of a self-portrait and it ends with bruce nellman spinning on his head and sort of mumbling and it's one of the most touching images of what it might be like to be an artist or to try to connect to the world around us. and so i thought -- i wanted the viewer to live with that image of the excitement of being an artist. >> rose: well, as sarah was whispering, enough about the artists, let's talk about her. (laughter) she didn't say that at all. she wouldn't say that. tell me what i'm going to see. >> so this is the front of the u.s. pavilion. the pavilion subpoena a neoclassical building built in 1930 and it's completely symmetrical. you walk in and there are two wings that are symmetrical and it that has entryway which is like a compass which is a palladian idea. the this location was borrowed by the british and the americans

famously jefferson was a huge fan of pa laid owe and built monticello based on that model so the taking that building as a starting point i wanted everything to be off center, off kilter and stable. so the peace on the outside of the building climbs up from one side and over the top of the building and the existing things that are there that opposed this symmetry of the building are one tree which used to be symmetrical because the entire garden had been symmetrically planted and very rigorously symmetrically planted. now it's say symmetrical because of the death of trees and the window that in 1970 before the building was landmarked was cut like a gash across that building sand now actually covered for the majority of the time with a faux brick painting. so i pulled that off and tried to make that whole building feel off kilter. >> rose: the next slide is --

you tell me. >> the next slide is one of the interior rooms. this is a pendulum. there's a pendulum -- all of the works in the interior are loosely based on the systems of modeling information. of modeling i think be beyond our capacity to ever understand and the humility and it's a wonder with what are one has. but they become a classic model like a pendulum, so all of the sculptures are based on the idea that has an attempt to function. this idea of behavior that i brought up. this idea of when you go to the room you hopefully are witnessing almost behavior or the desire to understand information rather than a physical object or sculpture so this is the planetarium and peace. >> the notion of the compass and how we locate ourselves in a perpetually disoriented -- >> exactly.

so i take the idea of a compass. it gets repeated in three rooms and above this compass in three rooms is a sculpture that we see based on the idea of a plantar i didn't mean and the numbering of which room you come to first and last, for me it was an incredible opportunity as curators have to decide what information -- how information is revealed over time so how you actually see one piece to the next and how that information was revealed was a real privilege and being able to do an entire building. >> >> exactly. let's see the next slide. >> so this is the actual -- you can see the floor here is the actual compass terazzo floor that centers you in the building normally. the way that i approach it is i changed the circulation so that you came in not into this center room so this is a very

neoclassic idea, you come into a room and know you're in the most important location in space and in that room you know you can go left, right, center and you have a sense of your direction. so this room normally is the room that locates you but in this circulation i made you go in through an emergency exit rather than the center of the building. you come to the center in the middle of your journey through these five spaces. this is the last room and that's a window that's cut in the side of the room and i've mirrored the window at the same height throughout sot that when you came into that room the idea was that you felt like you were in interior space that felt exterior. and when you exited you discover that there's an exterior space that feels very interior. and i think that window is quite a surprise in the building that existed before was never thought of as something part of an art work.

>> rose: so suppose somebody is going to do what you did at the next biennale and they said to you "what skill set will i need to do this?" what would you say? wfrjts well, i think that it's a unique opportunity. the thing i love about in the relationship to my own work is my work is a marathon to put everything together and when you see the work, hopefully you imagine how it was put together and how it will fall apart. that you feel like you're coming to a location in time where it's at the edge of entropy and growth that's somewhere in between. so to have this kind of race to make a work, that's what a biennale work ends up being, whether it's the curator or the artist making new commissions there is that, you know, you're throwing the ball and you have to run. for me that's sort of the way i always work so i think as an artist you have to be willing to -- and a curator throw yourself completely into it and while having a lot of direction you

know that you're always -- there's always been a change in the moment. and that you love to work that way. and that you love to let the show develop in realtime. >> rose: i can't wait to go. >> you also have to remember who came before her. jackson pollock, so -- >> rose: well, i would say they're in good company. (laughter) this is remarkable. let me just say one small thing, i should, because there is a young woman who works for me named emma mccormack good heart who put together this in a wonderful way and helped me understand it and brought you here to this table which i am in great debt to her for what she's done here because it really is something special and it has real impact and consequence and what you do both to make it happen and what she's done to put this together makes it all appreciate that art is in some

significant way a reflection of the permanence of our civilization. so thank you. >> thank you. >> rose: thank you. >> thank you. >> rose: back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: james turrell's work as an artist explores light, perception, color and space. he's an orchestrator of experience and every artist knows how cheap an effect is and how revolutionary an experience. turrell's first major museum show in new york since 1980 is currently on view at the guggenheim museum. it features a major new project called atom ring. the guggenheim is transferred into an enormous volume filled with shifting artificial and natural light. i am pleased to have james turrell at that table for the first time. welcome. what a pleasure it is to have you here. >> terrific to be here. >> rose: you got three exhibitions at the same time? >> actually more than that.

>> rose: big ones, though. >> yes, yes, large ones. three museum shows. >> rose: was it planned that way? >> yes. >> rose: in order to do what? achieve what? >> well, after 48 years of working to do a retrospective and representing it with only 23 works so that would normally be more work that is done by an artist but this takes up quite a bit of space so it took three museums to do that. >> rose: let me go back to the beginning. growing up, quaker family? >> quaker family, yes. >> rose: not much in your own family a sense of art is crucial to life. >> well, wheel rights don't believe in art, they think it's vanity. >> rose: art is a vanity? >> yes. of course now seeing art fares and auction prices and all this, maybe it is. >> rose: how did you exscape

from this perception of light and its thingness-- that word i want you to identify for me. >> it occupies space, it has presence, something you feel to be there. >> rose: it's a thing into itself, not just that you use to observe something else. >> well, it has mass so it is something thing. it's passing through quickly. our make these spaces t light . perception and these are spaces that both protect it and in some way form it. but it is light you're looking at. light in the space. >> rose: and when did you discover that this was what made you most curious? >> curious from being a child. i mean, everybody has -- even test your response to light and so -- and children are fascinated by it and perhaps i never grew it of it. >> rose: you never grew out of it. because most children don't go on and become an artist of light. >> well, most children don't become a fireman because that

they want to do when they're young, too. but some do. some do do. >> rose: was there a neplt said "wow, this is how i want to spend my life"? >> that was kind of all along. sort of a bit of an assumption but it was only as it became possible to do this in art that it became that important and that came about in college and from very good teachers. james dimitrian who was at the des moines art center and before that a teacher at pomona college >> rose: and you once said the world is not one we receive but one we create. >> rose: well, we're quite unaware of how much that we perceive. that is part of creation. that we are co-creators. this is something that first you hear about in eastern philosophies or now even in

subatomic particle physics where we're finding what we're looking for which has to do with perhaps even making it but how much of the world that will we assume is amazing. we have prenl disperception or ways of seeing that we have ways of perceiving that we have actually formed that may not actually be that way. or don't necessarily have to be that way. >> rose: and you want to understand what? >> that we are part of creating that which we think we perceive. >> rose: right, right. >> just that little part. and, of course, this is different in every piece. sometimes you're successful doing that, other times not so. >> rose: is the guggenheim the perfect place for you? >> it's a difficult place. >> rose: but does the nature of

it offer you possibility it is places might not? >> the staff-- that is those who do the work and the director and the curators there-- they gave me the opportunity. because that has -- it's what you want to do and how much you can involve yourself in doing it how much they're willing to spend and take on and what risks they're table to take on that's really important. >> rose: what i love about it-- and this is me as a journalist-- what i love is the idea of the guggenheim is where frank lloyd wright meets james turrell. >> or i meet frank. >> rose: or you meet frank. >> i think it's rather glorious combination! >> rose: i do, too sfwlfrplts that's my point. >> i think he would like it. as richard armstrong said the red phone on his desk that goes directly to frank did not ring. >> rose: (laughs) did not ring at all. >> right. and i think that there have been other projects that may have been in there where people

wondered about that. >> rose: your work is not easily photographed. >> well, someone has to make up for the work that's photographed better than it is. the photograph is rather flat. also when it photographs you can't tell whether it's standing up vertically or just how it works that way. >> rose: this is what chuck close meant. it's experience. you provide an experience and people fall down, even. >> that has happened and influenced how i would show thing in the u.s. >> rose: what do you mean? >> that was at the whitney show. actually, there were two. one dove into a piece thinking it would be soft and the other actually fell back against something she thought was a wall it was going to be a wall, and her testimony is there was this wall -- actually it was a

receiving wall, i leaned against it and it wasn't there. so that did happen and i stopped having pieces that people then walked through in the u.s. and left them for asia. >> rose: do you find it difficult or easy for you-- because you are an artist and words do come to you-- and the command of language is yours but nevertheless it's difficult to describe what you do. >> i try to stay away from that because it's made for -- >> rose: the thing speaks for itself. >> yes. so i did find some difficulty in trying to do this with patrick lan anyone and the lannin foundation who supported the initial work at the crater. went over and over and over everything that was happening, each piece that was being built. it was amazingly helpful and then there was this time that things were down he brought out the board to see it, they went

through it, they were thrilled, he pulled me aside and said "why didn't you tell me this was your building?" i said "i thought i did." so those things -- you do come up against the reality of how good your descriptive process is. >> rose: i was alluding to this earlier and your discovery of this and i was thinking about your aunt, frances hoch which he is. she played a huge role. >> she was "17" magazine and part of the making of ma'am what sell later. she was sort of my auntie maim. she lived at 4 grammarsy park. >> but she intro introduced you to the world of new york. >> yes. also thomas wilford that she meant to introduce me to, and of course the beautiful monet water lily which is were amazing. >> rose: and did they speak to you? >> absolutely they did. but there was this thomas wolford there who was this strange guy who made this light in a box kind of thing and i thought, you know, that looks

like our time. and that was something that we're doing now and for me painting was european, coming from los angeles we'd see photographs of art you'd see hit in the slide show but you have to remember the mona lisa was projected to the same dimension as barnett newman's "who's afraid of yellows?" so sometimes the actual things seemed small and not very luminous. i did feel that sometimes. that's how i got culture. and culture is very different than in los angeles. that's a town that's an entertainment town, not culture. i always thought that was what l.a. wanted to be on its day off. i know have a piece in las vegas >> rose: las vegas is what l.a. wanted to be on its day off?

>> absolutely. that's how it seemed to me. so it was a town that didn't worry about having taste and this is strangely freeing, too. because taste is constriction. taste is restriction. >> rose: and if you know that or feel that then you can just -- >> well, you can do what you want to do and you come here and you feel culture having been made already. that's not true in the time i was growing up in l.a. >> you are at the first rank of american artists. i don't have to tell you that, you know that, but you may be modest about it. what is it that we want to understand about your genius? and pardon the use of these words, about front rank and genius. but what is it that you hope we get about what you are about? >> well, the joy of the sensual.

that's often missed in descriptions of my work. it's quite sensual and even emotional. and that i like about it. it has more to do with -- the description has more to do with describing how it happens or how it comes about or what it is. that doesn't seem to bother me. >> rose: and what's the hardest about it? the creation for you? >> oh, working with light is -- >> rose: but is it the idea or the execution? >> it's the execution. execution. ideas and thoughts are cheap. you know, you can have many of them but it's actually pulling it off actually making these things, realizing them. as an artist you don't to man -- you have to manifest. you don't get to count the things that you haven't done that you thought of that were terrific. >> rose: one thing that fascinates me is when you hopped aboard that single-engine plane and went from place to place sort of with a sleeping bag and

exploring what was that about? >> well, it was about really learning about the earth. the earth is like a rhinoceros hide. it's just folded and so crusty and really beautiful and, of course, the west you find it jammed together the most. of course, it happened in the after lashians and that's why those bridges were made but that happened out west where you see the history of the geology just bare. it's not overgrown with planting so it was exciting to feel the earth and then thinking of how it getting up into the sky. >> rose: did you have a pilot or you did it yourself? >> i'm a pilot. >> rose: you are a pilot. >> so that was really exciting to do also. and i took seven months doing it up. >> rose: and looking for what? >> i wasn't sure. >> rose: ah.

>> if i had known it would have been easier to find. >> rose: but as is formally said when you saw it you knew that was what you were looking for? >> that's true. >> rose: what did you see? >> people even think that of art. i don't know what art it but i know what i like. >> rose: i can't define it but i know it when i'll see it. >> rose: yes, but that happens to all of us that's one risk where you can get into that kind of zone. >> rose: so what did you mind? >> i found something that was geologically interesting itself. it was a thing, this volcanic center cone which is is a strom bolanle type crater. but it was something that was off by itself and seeing it, you know, i liked the quality that it had. it's like people that want to have an island or volcano. an archipelago, that kind of thing. there were people in would look for that when they're thinking of property or location or whatever. so this is trying to find a

place where i could make this piece that was like a boar be dur or like a -- you know, pagan has sites like that, the wonderfully sided one is, of course, match pee chew but the thing of that is not that strong. >> rose: you call it the rodin -- >> the rodin crater. i say rodin because it's was the great nemesis of -- in terms of japanese horror movies. so he was always the one who would take on this force and then after -- sort of retreat but always came back. >> rose: and you've been developing a network of tunnels and -- >> i had essentially the turret but i had to put in the tunnels and chambers. that's how i described it to patrick lannan and he just

laughed at that. after having supported it. it is a bit true. but i think that it -- you know, you can see this in her road i don't know, which is near hebron. you can see in the silvery hill and some of the hill forts in england like old sar rum. in fact, old sar rum is very much like rodin crater because it has the two sort of crater within a crater. >> rose: and you've been working on it since 1974. >> that's when i found it. i've been working on it since '72. it took me three years to buy it. i took two years and then was able to get the -- so in '76 i had the plans for a shown at a museum in amsterdam. so that's when i first had the plans so it is, of course, transnothingry fied since then which is a good lesson that if you don't support artists their

ideas get more expensive and complex. >> rose: you say sometimes you get discouraged. what do you get discouraged by? the mammothness of the -- >> no, no, just my ability to earn -- >> rose: to get support? >> yes. i have to have support to work. >> rose: even now? >> oh -- >> rose: or not so now. >> there are very few artists that are going to feel sorry for me so i don't know about that. but, yes, personally i can get discouraged. you might have a friend that still has not finished their thesis. i feel that way but it's coming along and i finished the larger projects like the -- an actual pyramid in yucatan that's now complete and that's near -- very close to a town. >> rose: do you let a lot of

people visit these places? >> that's not my business there. >> rose: how about the rodin? >> i let some people visit. >> rose: very few. >> rose: but those part are supporting it. >> rose: really. >> it's a bit like not wanting to show a painting that you haven't quit inished. >> but that's coming along. >> rose: do you have a date certain? >> i always said i was going to be done by 2000 and i'm sticking to it. >> rose: (laughs) >> rose: let's look at the first slide. >> that's roe anyone, one of the 1969 pieces. and they had -- this is part of the collection of the guggenheim just describe this, can you, for he? >> 85 feet high and i -- all the levels that frank made and on

the right you see that level comes in, where it starts and so these are the levels that actually there. >> and the next thing we'll see is 1967. i think. i'm a little bit -- >> rose: well, afram is a piece that was purchased from the plaza. that's from the plaza collection. and this is the early work where i just had light on the wall. >> rose: coming up next is prado? >> prado is also -- here it attaches more to the floor and it seems in terms of it -- how it looks it seems to be from the floor and it puts the wall in the background. so here was something, just a shape on the wall, makes this plastic pulli where you realize i'm making the picture plane be the wall.

and then i'm putting things on the surface and it will -- it becomes very malleable. i have pieces that come into the room like afram, the one before, things that seem to be where the wall was and the wall seems to recede. others it seem to pull through and look as though there's an opening through the wall. just right from the start i was beginning to get on to the craft. how do you form it? it doesn't form like clay where you form it with a hand. it doesn't form like hot wax or you don't carve it away like wood or with stone so getting to work with it is almost like making the instrument that helps you form it. so it's almost like sound. like music. >> rose: this is way off the beaten track but let me just ask you any way. so architects who create museums

light is central to what they want to do do people like that call on you and say "tell me, james, what do i need to know here"? >> no, but there are sometimes i've been called upon to help fix the chapel where the light has damaged the paintings and also where you look up and there's this big dark presence over your head. so that's something that i'm -- >> rose: what don't you know about light? >> well, i'd always be surprised. i was surprised that we're able to stop it. that actually -- that we found a medium where we could actually down light to the point it didn't move through it. that was -- that's very recently >> rose: how did that happen? >> through i guess a lot of experimentation. so seeing that is quite amazing to me. also i'm interested in experiments where we are now suspecting that light knows when

we're looking. >> rose: light knows when we're looking? it changes when we look? >> yes, it has different behavior when we're looking. >> rose: how do we figure that out? >> well, i don't know all about the experimental process in deciding that but basically it has different behaviors through a grading when we're looking and when we're not. that's quite interesting. it almost imbues it with consciousness. >> rose: which is what everybody wants to understand. >> i think everybody even feels that way. here's this substance that we drink as vitamin "d" through the skin. it's actually a food. and we're light eaters. then, of course, it has strong very strong emotional effect in a film where we're not really looking at light or the story carried through the film or by light. but it has very powerful connotation there is as well and then, of course, every time we talk about light, near death

experiences, always described with the vocabulary of light. somadi, or enlightenment. all these things have to do with the light-filled void, this quality where we are achieving something on the light not beheldle with the eyes open. because with the eyes closed there's full vision. you think of those that dream, there's full vision without eyes so is this memory? well, no, because often we're dreaming things that aren't even pieced together from memory. often there's no memory at all. so where does this light in the dream come from and how do we have this full vision that we access seven or eight hours a night. with the eyes closed. and whan is the light -- where does the light come from in the dream? those are very interesting

thoughts. >> rose: they sure are. >> so i wanted to actually deal with the light that seeped to be a light that we knew but don't often see with the eyes open. that you can see light this way but not that often with the eyes open. so i would like to have this sort of recognition of a light that is sort of known to us but haven't -- is surprised to find like when you go in and see someone you've known in certain context and now you're in a new context and you can't remember their name and what they're doing here. that kind of thing is like what i would like to achieve in my work. that you know this light but it's not familiar with the eyes open. >> rose: it's an extraordinary story. where do you go from here? you're 70, you just celebrated your 70th birthday. >> well, i would now like to have this way of working. i would have liked to have had this maybe 20 years ago. >> rose: the way of working?

>> that i have these many opportunities and all of that. because you have to sort of be asked. it's not as though you're awarded these things by asking for them because people want to do them or don't. so this is has really come more of late, i would have like to have been at this stage earlier when i had more energy. >> rose: but maybe less wisdom? >> certainly less wisdom. in all kinds of ways of life, that's for sure. >> rose: a pleasure to meet you. >> very nice to meet you, this is terrific. >> rose: let me give everybody what they ought to know. the exhibition at the guggenheim will run from june 21 to september 25. it was organized in conjunction with the los angeles county museum of art and museum of fine arts in houston, comprises one of the three as i referenced earlier major exhibitions spanning the u.s. during the summer of 2013 which is where we are now. as the curator of the houston exhibition allison mcgreen put it "this is the first time three

museums have mounted exhibitions of this magnitude in conjunction all devoted to a single artist. thank you, pleasure. thank you for joining us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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