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25/2/2005

Dan Flavin

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth

Dan Flavin: A Retrospective, the first comprehensive exhibition of Flavin's career, presents approximately 50 objects and installations, most of which use the medium of fluorescent light, along with drawings, sketches, and collage-constructions. Michael Auping, chief curator of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, notes, "Dan Flavin's light installations may be the closest thing we have to a contemporary sublime. The apparent simplicity of these industrial, fluorescent light fixtures belies their ability to swallow us in ethereal fields of color." Auping adds, "Seeing Flavin's flowing luminosity traveling through Ando's generous corridors is something I've been looking forward to for a number of years."

Dan Flavin: A Retrospective showcases the chronological development of Flavin's work over the course of 35 years, demonstrating the various means through which he experimented with light, color, and interior space. It includes the full range of his work, from the early "icons" to installations that occupy an entire room. Many of these are specifically dedicated by Flavin to modernist predecessors and contemporary artists he admired, such as Constantin Brancusi, Piet Mondrian, Henri Matisse, Alexander Calder, and Barnett Newman. Other dedications reveal Flavin's commitment to the politics of his time and his attempt to reinvent the genre of the commemorative monument.

The exhibition begins with a group of "icons," produced between 1961 and 1963, a series of box-like constructions with attached incandescent and fluorescent lights. Many of these works signify Flavin's invention of an object that is neither painting nor sculpture, yet incorporates elements of both.

The next section of the exhibition represents Flavin's move from the "icon" construction into works composed solely of fluorescent light. Standardized tubes that were available from hardware stores in prefabricated lengths and colors were used by the artist in an unaltered state, beginning with the diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi), 1963.

A group of Flavin's well-known "monuments for V. Tatlin, 1964–1981, comprise the chief example of the principle of seriality and permutation in his work. The range of Flavin's content is represented by pieces that include political subjects, such as untitled (to a man, George McGovern) 1, 1972. In other works, Flavin pays respectful, slightly humorous homage to fellow artists such as Robert Ryman, in an installation using warm and daylight white lamps, and Ad Reinhardt, in a work consisting only of ultraviolet (or "black") light.

One of Flavin's signature "barrier" works, untitled (to you, Heiner, with admiration and affection), 1973, a 120 foot–long installation in green fluorescent light, will be on view in the central pavilion gallery on the ground floor, where the light from the installation will be reflected in the Modern's pond.

The exhibition also includes a selection of works on paper (portraits, landscapes, and collages, as well as plans and diagrams), which reveal both practical and conceptual aspects of Flavin's working process.

Dan Flavin (1933–1996)

Dan Flavin was born on April 1, 1933, in New York City. In the mid-1950s he served in the U.S. Air Force as a meteorological technician in Korea, after which he returned to New York and attended the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts, art history classes at the New School for Social Research, and drawing and painting classes at Columbia University. In 1959, while at Columbia, he began to make assemblages and collages.

In 1961 Flavin had his first solo exhibition at the Judson Gallery in New York, and later that year he began experimenting with the "icons," He became known as an originator of minimal art through inclusion in key group exhibitions such as Black, White, and Gray at the Wadsworth Atheneum in 1964, and Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum in New York City in 1966. He was featured in the Minimal Art exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, in 1968, and continued to exhibit nationally and internationally until his death in 1996 of complications from diabetes.

Flavin's use of unadorned fluorescent light placed him at the forefront of a generation of artists, including Donald Judd, Carl Andre, and Robert Morris. These artists placed unaltered industrial materials in the service of abstract principles such as serial repetition and the "literal" relationship of the art object to the viewer and ambient space, defining characteristics of minimal art.

Among Flavin's most important late large-scale installations was his project to light the entire rotunda of the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City to commemorate its restoration and reopening in 1992 (based on a smaller installation he had made there for the Sixth Guggenheim International Exhibition in 1971).

Three of Flavin's most ambitious permanent installations were completed after his death: the lighting of Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiesa Rossa, a 1920s-designed Catholic church in Milan, Italy, in 1997; a project for Richmond Hall at the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, in 1998; and an installation commissioned for six former army barracks at Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, in 2000.

Dan Flavin: A Retrospective is organized by the Dia Art Foundation, New York, in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and curated by Michael Govan, Dia Art Foundation director and president, and Tiffany Bell, director of the Dan Flavin catalogue raisonné project. The national tour is sponsored by Altria Group.

Publications

Two important books on Flavin's work have been published to coincide with the exhibition.

Dan Flavin: A Retrospective, the exhibition catalogue, comprises three essays, a list of works in the exhibition, a comprehensive bibliography, and a chronology of the artist's life. The essays include a history of the development of Flavin's work; an account of Flavin's first retrospective, in 1969, at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa, with emphasis on Flavin's own role in planning the show; and a description of the artist's working process, with the first full technical explanation of Flavin's studio practice and the issues pertaining to the certification and dating of works. The 208-page paperback edition, featuring 150 four-color and 40 black-and-white illustrations, is available in The Modern Shop for $45.

Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights, 1961–1996, is the first comprehensive book about Flavin's work. This separate publication incorporates the exhibition catalogue and additionally includes a catalogue raisonné of Flavin's light works. The only publication to present all of Flavin's lights together and to document the artist's entire career, The Complete Lights features hundreds of color images, many reproduced from new photography. Each light work is represented by a photograph and/or a graphic diagram as well as comprehensive information about its construction, exhibition history, and appearance in publications. The 432-page cloth-bound, boxed edition, including 520 four-color and 60 black-and-white illustrations, is available in The Modern Shop for $150.

Both volumes are published by the Dia Art Foundation in association with Yale University Press and represent more than five years of scholarly research and previously unavailable information about Flavin's work. They contain archival and new, color-correct photography in addition to technical specifications attributed to each artwork.

Research for the exhibition and publication was supported by The Henry Luce Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
3200 Darnell Street
Fort Worth, Texas 76107
Museum Gallery Hours
Tues, Wed, Thurs, Sat 10 am–5 pm
Fri noon–8 pm
Sun noon–5 pm
The special exhibition is included in general Museum admission; $6 for adults, $4 for seniors (60+) and students with identification, free for children 12 and under, free for Modern members.

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