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Artist or Maker: Dan Flavin (1933-1996)
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Provenance: Nicholas Wilder Gallery, New York
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Rowen, Pasadena
James Corcoran, Los Angeles
Fred Hoffman, New York
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Exhibited: New York, Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Dan Flavin, December 1966
Paris, Galerie Karsten Greve, Dan Flavin, September-November 1989. Paris, Galerie Karsten Greve, 1996-1997, pp.62-63 (illustrated in color).
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Literature: B. Smith, Dan Flavin, fluorescent light, etc., Ottawa 1969, p.251 (illustrated).
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Notes: Dan Flavin belongs to the first generation of Minimalist artists. His aesthetic can be related to the work of artists such as Carl Andre, Donald Judd or Sol Lewitt, all of whom have been called Minimalist artists due to the simplification of their formal vocabulary. But it was the Modernist masters who deeply influenced Flavin's early work. The artist's admiration for Brancusi's Endless Column, 1918 manifests itself in the obsessive repetition of a single essential form, the fluorescent tube. Flavin also gained inspiration from the Russian avant-garde, Vladimir Tatlin's non illustrative sculptures and Malevitch's White square on White. Flavin wanted to de-mystify the aura of the artwork. His work does not have any other signification than itself and there are no symbolic references.
Flavin's art consists of composing standard fluorescent tubes into structures that form light and surround the environment. Early in his career he exhibited fluorescent tubes on the wall or lay them on the ground, using a range of ten colors and five shapes. Shortly afterwards, the tubes were displayed perpendicularly to their base thus penetrating space and in 1966, they formed a situation, a luminous environment standing on the ground. Untitled, 1966 is one of the first examples of these situations.
Untitled, 1966 is a robust example of Flavin's colonnades. It is a rare combination of vertical, horizontal and diagonal tubes which illustrate Flavin's will to structure and transform space. "I knew that the actual space of a room could be broken down and played with by planting illusions of real light (electric light) at crucial junctures in the room's composition" (Deutsche Guggenheim, Dan Flavin The Architecture of Light, Berlin 1965-1999). Untitled, 1966 creates a complex effect which emphasizes architectural specifics. This division of space is similar to Mondrian's experiments in dividing the picture plane of a canvas.
In Untitled, 1966, the color diffuses itself beyond the tubes, and into the surrounding space, creating a mysterious luminous zone. Simultaneously, the piece creates a sense of obscurity being both a visible and an invisible presence.
Piet Mondrian, Pier and Ocean, 1914
