Exhibition Brochure, Dan Flavin

Home , Dan Flavin

DAN DAN FLAVIN

1996) 1996)

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West 22nd Street, New York City City York New Street, 22nd West

May 22, 1997-June 14, 1998 1998 14, 1997-June 22, May

( 1962/63, 1962/63, 1970 (

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excluding excluding bulb and

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porcelain porcelain receptacles, pull

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cent cent light. /8 25 x /8 25 I x I

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1962-63

1970. Blue Blue 1970. and red fluorescent

1996. Blue Blue 1996. and green fluores

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teel teel receptacle, glass cap, red

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diagonal diagonal of May 23

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1/8 x x 25 1/8 x 1/8 3/8 10 inches, excluding

and and Dominique de Menil.

Alice Alice and George R

in in memory of the friendship between Constantin Constantin Brancusi),

for for the Arts. Gift of Nancy Brown Wellin

pair pair of staircases. Collection Dia Center

untitled, untitled, inches, inches, excluding bulb and fixture

3/4 3/4 inches.

light. light. 97 inches 1/2 x variable length x 3

untitled

Dia Dia Center for the Arts, Gift of the artist.

fluorescent fluorescent light. 8 feet long. Collection

Art Art Museum of Fort Worth

th fixture

cent cent light. Site-specific installation in a

Private Private Collection. light light fluore

disc disc flashers. 25 16 x / 1/8 25 x 1/8 7 10

chains, chains, red incandescent bulbs, socket

on on masonite Blind Blind Lemon Jefferson),

bulb bulb and fixture

incandescent incandescent bulb Barbara Barbara Rose, New York.

painted painted

Private Private Collection.

Mars Mars Black Liquitex on masonite, day- excluding excluding bulb and fixture.

bulbs

Judd Judd E

Sullivan)

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1961. Oil Oil 1961. on acrylic masonite and pine

1961-62

inches, inches, excluding bulb and fixture

fluorescent fluorescent light. 25 x 25 1/8 x 6 1/8

pull pull chains, clear incandescent

Oil Oil on masonite, porcelain receptacles

Collection Collection Donald Judd Estate

icon icon

Painted Painted wood box, red light bulb, red

x x 4 5/8 inches, excluding

Estate Estate of Dan Flavin

excluding excluding bulb and fixture.

bulb i

colored colored fire logs, vacuum incandescent

porcelain porcelain receptacle

Estate Estate of Dan Flavin

pine, pine, red fluorescent light. 25 x 25 1/8 1/8

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Donald Donald Judd

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1969

Chicago

i lnstallationen lnstallationen i in

Cologne

and and the members of the

Texts Texts by Dan Flavin

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installation

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Text Text by Dan Flavin

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m m Licht von Dan Flavin

Texts Texts by Carlo Huber,

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National National Gallery of Canada for

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1975 1975 und

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In In Flavin 1992 created a monumental

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Guggenheim Guggenheim Museum, New York. Flavin

1972

Kunstmuseum Kunstmuseum Basel and Kunsthalle

in fluor in

New New York, 1989

Contemporary Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in

Donald Donald Judd, and Franz Meyer.

Young Young Gallery for The Museum of

Basel, Basel, 1975

Licht Licht von Dan Flavin

flinf flinf lnstallationen fluores in and and Manfred Schneckenburger.

Richartz-Museum Richartz-Museum and the Kunsthalle

Dan Dan Flavin: thr

collaboration collaboration with Leo Castelli Gallery,

Brydon Brydon Smith.

Bochner, Bochner, Dan Flavin

the the Queen

Flavin, Flavin, 1964-1982.

Ottawa

Dan Dan Flavin

Cologne, Cologne, 1973-74

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Selected Bibliography Bibliography Selected

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1976

Fort Fort Worth

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Art Art Mu

From From he 1963, exhibited nationally and internationally

works, works, designed by the artist in a converted firehouse

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1994

and and open to the public each summer

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drawings

1975, 1975, and installations in

Munich

The The Saint Loui

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Dan Dan Flavin, and Klaus

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Dia Dia

4, 4, no. 4 (December 1965)

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Helmut Helmut Friedel

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: an an : autobiographical

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21-24

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1973. Texts Texts by 1973. Dan Flavin and Emily

installation installation for the reopening of the Solomon R

Dia Dia Art Council.

Support Support for this exhibition has been provided by Calvin Klein, Inc

died died on November 29, 1996

tained tained by

permanent permanent exhibition of

Dia Dia Center for the Arts opened the Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton, New York, a

School School for Social Research

Dan Dan Flavin was born in in 1933 New York City, where he later studied art history at the New

Flavin

Saint Saint Louis Lenbachhaus

Dan Dan Flavin.

Emily Emily S. Rauh.

Gallwitz

Texts Texts by Jay Belloli

Bismarck

The The Fort Art Worth Museum

im im Stadel, Texts by 1993. Beatrice von

Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main

white

Flavin

Dan Dan Flavin. lnstallation Dan Flavin

Christian Christian Ude, and Ulrich Wilmes.

Artforum Artforum

prints prints /972

fluorescent fluorescent light 1972-1975. fluores fluore DAN FLAVIN

(1962/63, 1970, 1996) That artificial Column was disposed as a regular formal consequence of numerous inglorious. They are as mute and indistinguished as the run of our architecture. My similar wood wedge-cut segments extended vertically-a hewn sculpture (at its icons do not raise up the blessed savior in elaborate cathedrals. They are constructed inception). The diagonal in its overt formal simplicity was only the installation of a concentrations celebrating barren rooms. They bring a limited light.' dimensional or distended luminous line of a standard industrial device. Little artistic Few artists are so identified with a particular medium outside painting or sculpture than Despite Flavin's claim to have made an arbitrary choice of color in his breakthrough craft could be possible. Dan Flavin. After 1963, Flavin's oeuvre consists almost entirely--except for drawings diagonal, the selection of gold light obviously conjures the traditional religious artefact, and prints-of light in the form of commercially available fluorescent tubes in all nine Both structures had a uniform elementary visual nature, but they were intended if ironically.' Forced by his father to attend a Roman Catholic seminary, Flavin had cul colors and all five shapes (one circular and four straight fixtures of different lengths). His to excel their obvious visible limitations of length and their apparent lack of tivated an educated rejection of traditional theology. Two of his first fluorescent works art, systematically deployed in this limited vocabulary of form and color, is often situated complication. The Endless Column was like some imposing archaic mythologic of 1963 were dedicated to William of Ockham, a medieval philosopher and founder of in relationship to a specific architectural context. One of Flavin's last installations , totem risen directly skyward. The diagonal, in the possible extent of its dissemina Nominalism who proposed that faith in God must be held separately from any rational untitled (1996) in the two four-story staircases of Dia's exhibition building , exemplifies tion as common light repeated effulgently across anybody's wall, had potential for deduction from facts of this earth. Flavin's invocation of Nominalism-known in the the aesthetic principles consistent throughout his work; a simple line of two-foot lights of becoming a modem technological fetish.' more popular dictum that "no more entities should be posited than are necessary" two colors (blue and green), placed vertically in a comer, fills the space with luminous (Ockham's Razor~ould be considered a Rosetta stone for Minimalism. Flavin's art The serial and systematic repetition of form in the Endless Column was ubiquitous in not color . As Flavin himself concluded in 1965, just two years after his first manifestation of neither rejects nor summons faith since the question of God is never raised. For, only Flavin's work but that of many of his contemporaries, including Carl Andre, Walter an art of pure light: "What has art been for me? In the past, I have known it (basically) as art is matter and is, therefore, no proof of anything spiritual. De Maria, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, and Robert Ryman. Its influence a sequence of implicit decisions to combine traditions of painting and sculpture in archi 1 persisted in Flavin 's work-albeit usually in horizontal form, as seen in untitled (1970), a tecture with acts of electric light defining space ." Created by an artist steeped in traditions of art and canons of Catholicism, Flavin's large-scale barrier in red and blue light.' (Flavin invented the "barrier" in 1966/68 as a icons and fluorescent works offer nothing less than a reconsideration and deconstruction ) The three defining moments in Flavin's career presented in this exhibition-his first free-standing series of fixtures that physically block a passageway or segment of a space of art's past through both the systematic use of form and light and the tool of irony. invention of fluorescent light art in 1961-62, his most ambitious free-standing work created with light.) Thus, he pits the transcendent aspirations of art against the practical commonality of in 1970, and the site-specific staircase work commissioned last year-illustrate the artist's the commercial light fixture, allowing neither to prevail. Flavin's confident matter-of-fact update of Brancusi's masterpiece in his diagonal and his enduring preoccupation with the diversity of artificial light's aesthetic application. The later unparalleled application of those ideas in the monumental barrier belie the more simplicity and systematic character of his work, as well as the almost scientific ingenuity M.G. ironic and self-conscious qualities of his first experiments with light in 1961 and 1962: a of his discovery of an art of light and the relentlessness with which he explored it, has series of eight painted boxes with attached fluorescent and incandescent light fixtures of earned Flavin a reputation as a progenitor and chief exponent of Minimalism. Yet the differing types, colors, and sizes which he called "icons." Among their memorable dedi artist himself disliked the label Minimalism and even an abbreviated review of his early I. Dan Flavin. '" ... in daylight or cool 5. Dan Flavin, quoted in etc. from Dan Flavin cations are icon I (the heart)(to the light of Sean McGovern which blesses everyone), icon works requires a more complex reading. white:' an autobiographicalsketch ," (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1969), II (the mystery)(to John Reeves), icon V (Coran s Broadway Flesh), and icon VI (Ireland Artforum 4, no. 4 (December 1965), p. 24. p. 176. The notes are taken from a record Flavin's proclaimed discovery of fluorescent light art came in an instant: dying)(to Louis Sullivan) . Flavin continued to dedicate most of his work to friends, Flavin later revised and republished this text book dated 9 August 1962, which is related to acquaintances, and others throughout his career with equal doses of respect and irony, in several exhibition catalogues. a drawing for a proposed icon VI (Novogorod) From a recent diagram, I declared the diagonal of personal ecstasy (the diagonal of but rarely with the sentiment intimated in these early pieces. dated 22 October 1962. May 25, 1963), a common eight-foot strip with fluorescent light of any commercially 2. Ibid. available color. At first, I chose "gold." ... By investing the archetype of the icon with ironic significance, Flavin devised his own 6. Flavin also describes the diagonal· position 3. Ibid. subtle theology of form and material: of the eight-foot tube as arbitrary,although it (I put the paired lamp and pan in position at an angle forty-five degrees above the 4. untitled (1970) is an eight-foot tall version is difficult not to imagine its connection to the horizontal because that seemed to be a suitable situation of resolved equilibrium Last week in the Metropolitan, I saw a large icon from school of Novgorod. I of a work made in 1967, an artificial barrier diagonal dynamic of compositionsof Russian but any other positioning could have been just as engaging.)' smiled when I recognized it. It had more than its painting. There was a physical of blue, red, and blue fluorescent light (to avant-garde artists such as Kasimir Malevich, feeling in the panel. Its recurving warp bore a history. This icon had that magical Flavin Starbuck Judd). untitled was also Vladimir Tatlin, and El Lissitzky, whose work Flavin later dedicated the gold diagonal to Constantin Brancusi in reference to the presiding presence which I have tried to realize in my own icons. But my icons installed in Donald Judd's Spring Street loft was constantly of interest to him. systematic elementary structure of the Romanian artist's Endless Column: differ from a Byzantine Christ held in majesty; they are dumb-anonymous and in New York.