Art: Poetry out of Emptiness

In New York, the light-wave sculptures of James Turrell

Perhaps the most interesting museum show by a living artist to be seen in New York at present is at the Whitney: "Light and Space," by a 37-year-old Californian named James Turrell. A spare-time pilot and full-time sculptor, Turrell has filled an entire floor of the Whitney with almost nothing: some walls, some tungsten and fluorescent lamps, and the reactions between them. To say that he has posed some ingenious visual conundrums on an ambitious scale is true, but insufficient. Turrell has also contrived an...