Dan Flavin Retrospective.

The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, September 2005.
The exhibit is currently on view at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art until August 12, 2007.

I lived in New York City from autumn 1959 until 1990, most of those years in the West Village. It seems to me I have always known the name, Dan Flavin, and, if asked, I could have said at any time that he worked exclusively with fluorescent lighting fixtures. I remember having seen some of those works in various galleries and museums. But the work had never intrigued me and I had never gone out of my way to see any of the retrospectives. I saw this exhibition because I was in Chicago specifically to see museums and this was the current offering at this particular venue.

The Venue.
The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art is a block or so east of Michigan Avenue in an area known as The Miracle Mile, the miracle being, I suppose, that there are so many people who have the money to shop in the expensive shops there. The museum is a rectangular box clad in stone. The center of the front is glass rising to the top of the building and through it one can see down the long central corridor, open from the ground floor to the roof, to the back of the building, through another floor-to-ceiling glass wall and on toward Lake Michigan. Thus the building is a long rectangular box divided inside into two narrower rectangular boxes. The galleries are inside these interior boxes. A lobby across the second floor on the front connects the two interior boxes, as does a smaller pedestrian bridge at the back.

One of the hallmarks of Chicago architecture is its bold use of space: many of the entities there appear to me to be larger than they need to be. This museum is no exception: it is very large indeed. This large size is particularly important in regard to this exhibit: this is concerned with light and space, just as early Chicago architecture was concerned with light and air. In these huge spaces this exhibit seems perfectly at home.

On the landings.
The exhibition occupied the whole of the second floor, the various exhibition rooms and spaces flowing one into the other. On the entry landing to the exhibit there is the first of the Flavin artworks standing against the window wall with the view of Michigan Avenue. It is four feet high and about 75 feet long. It is a grid of overlapping squares each divided into six horizontal rectangles, three beside three. The three of one square overlaps three of the next square. It has the look of a running fence. This design is created with fixtures mounted on the armature and all outlined in green lights. They emit a harsh, garish glow. The entry is flooded in this green light, but the window and the view soften the effect.

On the far side of this lobby and this work, after the center opening into the main galleries, there is a long wall. The wall is the back of the galleries beyond and it faces the running fence and the front of the building. It is a 14-foot high by 75-foot wall of color reflecting the green of the artwork at the end nearest to it and the daylight from an unseen window in another gallery at the far end. This entire 75-foot wall has a perfect blend from bright green to cool white. The wall, painted by a thick industrial roller, has a mottled surface producing subtle color variations, as if the color had been applied and blended by hand. This blended wall is not a part of the work with the green light: it is the collateral result of the ambience of both these light sources and it has been left bare to show the viewer the breadth of the concept when fully realized. The monumentality of the wall and the perfect blend and the texture, its implied reference to the tradition of painting, gives the awareness that we have a tradition and that we cannot escape history, that we share time with the past. On this particular piece, I found the collateral effect far more interesting than the artwork itself.

The bridge at the back of the building has an open view down to the floor below on the interior side and the view through the glass wall to the lake on the other. Except for the openings into the galleries, this is essentially an area in which a solid wall faces a solid wall. A glass and chrome coffee table and two Barcelona chairs are in the center of this space. They sit on a highly polished and reflective floor. On the walls behind the chairs there are art works of fixtures with red, yellow, and blue lights. Daylight is reflected in the polished black marble floor, daylight and the fluorescence wash the walls. The fluorescent design is reflected in the glass tabletop. This design is interrupted by objects on the table…books and magazines. I could alter the designs by moving these objects. All of these components together create a harmonious oneness.

The chairs, the magazines and the books emphasize this area as being a place of respite from the exhibition. But there were two artworks here. The result was to give these art works a sense of minimal importance. Yet, in an exhibit of art works that look to have been designed exclusively with a gallery installation in mind, these two smaller works hanging as if in a living room, might have been placed here to indicate that Flavin’s art was indeed “home worthy”, at least for the high profile collector.



In the galleries.
In a construction that is in essence a room with three walls and a ceiling, there are eight yellow lights, each eight feet long, on the vertical axis creating stripes across the white square of the back wall. The last fixture has been omitted and in its place there is a void of intense green. This installation invites the viewer to come in. Going to the sidewall and looking into the void, it is possible to see that there is more to be seen in the space beyond the back wall. But that partially hidden back sidewall is angled so that the fullness of that space cannot be seen completely. There is more but we are unable to see it: thus; we can only perceive according to our ability to perceive. But what we perceive is not all that there is to know.

Stepping outside that installation and continuing, I saw a passageway beside it. The floor/wall and the ceiling/wall joins were lined with white florescent lights. There was a light that blends from green on one side of the far back wall to mauve gray on the other side. It is dim and forbidding. Passing through this corridor and turning to the green light there is a repeat of the same construction as was seen on the other side of the “box”, but in green and with an orange void. The orange void is disappointing in that it does not have the depth of the other box. In turning to go back through the corridor, the corridor is seen to be, from this end, lavender rose. It is decidedly a different color. Passing through this again and turning to look back again, it is once again a corridor with white fluorescent lights. What is seen? What is perceived? Change. Reassurance. And it is always gentle, always calm and respectful.

An art work with one plastic element. A horizontal bar spans the corner of a room. Where it touches the wall on the left the wall is red. Where it touches the wall on the right the wall is green. These two colors blend with the ambient light from the room creating the suggestion of a form, of a diamond, on the wall in the corner. But it is only a suggestion and the color is only a perception. The only thing that exists is the bar, the line. I found this very pleasing, if only for the suspicion that I understood the artist’s intentions and his accomplishment.

In a gallery with several works the lighting fixtures have only white fluorescent bulbs and they are arranged in patterns suggesting art deco and art moderne motifs. This suggested the persistence of tradition in the here and the now.

In another gallery, two works, each on a different wall, composed of circular fluorescent bulbs arranged on the wall in a large triangle against the corner of the adjoining wall. Each of these uses white bulbs: one is cool white and the other is a warm white. Both are seen in the same room and at the same time but from different perspectives, one face-on and the other obliquely. This raises the question of relationships and of parts, of similarities and differences. Both are also seen in the surface of the polished black floor and that suggests another place. But I can walk on that place and that place is only “there”, the other. It is a virtual reality, and elusively it moves away from me as I near the circular lights. I stand two feet away from the lights and that “other” at my feet disappears. It is illusion; it is inaccessible. But I could touch the lights if I cared to do so.

Two fixtures with the red bulbs span the corner of two walls, one above the other, touching, and face the viewer. A long fixture extends out from that corner directly at the viewer. This reads as “Danger”, “Do not approach”, “Red”. I obey. I move to one of the sidewalls and I discover that I had misread the configuration. There is only one red light spanning the corner of the room. What I had thought was a second tube is a red tube on each of the sidewalls placed lower than the other tube. They had created the illusion of another light spanning the corner. Trompe L’oeil in the illusion of red. Nice.

In a vaulted glass ceiling a squiggled design is the reflection of a work in an unseen gallery. It hovers in the nowhere.

What is hard line on the wall is soft line on the floor.

In this exhibition and in this space, everything is something. Each thing is everything.

Standing at one side of the museum and looking through the whole building, through the openings on the landing at the back of the building, I can see the series of galleries in a perfect one-point linear perspective. It is thrilling to notice that each wall in the receding view is a different, but vibrant color. This reminds me of Luis Barragon’s statement that it is the business of the artist to invent new colors. I suspect he would have loved Dan Flavin’s work.

I love the creation of all the possible variations from the use of one material. I love the variations of the same designs when seen in different colors.

The Pink and Gold Room is in a very long gallery. The two colors are arranged in an alternating sequence all around the room. The room has a vaulted ceiling and flat white walls. This is exquisite: it is very elegant. I see the concept. I see the execution. I see the mastery of craft and the knowledge of the materials. And I also see a commonality…Tiffany/Flavin… two ways of thinking about light; two masters.

Looking across that gallery I see a modern parson’s bench. It is black. The wooden top reflects the pink and gold lights of the installation. It blocks the reflection on the polished black floor creating a shadow on the floor that reads as a black void. The bench appears to float. I am convinced that it is weightless. I believe that it does float. I accept the truth of what my eyes see and of what I perceive.

Throughout this exhibition I saw no wires, no electrical connections. I saw only walls, fixtures, tubes, color, and designs representing manifested concepts. The installation, the museum’s contribution, is an example of superior craftsmanship.

As an artist, Dan Flavin seems to have escaped the tyranny of the painter’s rectangle and the sculptor’s pedestal. Here the entire room is the format. There is an evident mastery of craft and a mastery of materials. A masterful use of the plastic elements. Design. Concept. Color! Liberation. The limited palette is glorious. The colors of the fluorescent tubes, given to garish, have a completely ethereal quality. The fixtures work as bars, as line, and create an insistence on the viewer maintaining an aesthetic distance. There is no attempt to create in the viewer’s mind identification with the light, that he is the light. The art work/viewer divide is respectfully maintained. Yet when Flavin wants to bring you in closer the piece is so constructed that the viewer obeys immediately.

The arrangement of the fixtures has a strong design concept. This is not casual (as I have always suspected that his work might be); this is not “show” (as I have also always suspected). This has no “design by accident” aspect to it. This is an artist exploring his medium, giving us the best of his discoveries, always perfecting his concepts that then engender other concepts. He realizes what he sees and he is able to see more in each realization. What more do I see. What more can I see. What more is there to see?

The work here shows that something have been learned and used by the artist. There is none of the controlled lighting of the film set here, no flags, no shutters, no barn doors, and no snoots. All of the collateral light becomes ambient light and it is used to add something more to the configuration of the fixtures. The light becomes a plastic element and it is used by the artist as yet another tool. But this is never with a sense of manipulating the viewer or the plastic elements. The focus is always on the design configuration, the light and the result of all the elements working together. The audience, the viewer, has only been invited in to share the experience of the man and his work. The viewer is always respected, as the elements are always respected.

Excellent. This is one of the finest and most exciting exhibits I have ever seen.


My fellow viewers.
Sadly, I noticed that in these rooms the visitors come and go, glancing without seeing, without trying to know, looking instead at the incidentals. I saw a man wandering through the galleries who stopped to inspect the thermostat on the wall. I saw a young woman fan through one of the magazines on the glass-topped table as if she was angry and she was using the magazine to disengage herself from her emotional state. Another man traced a skid mark on the floor with disapproval. They come and go with their arms folded tightly across their chests, chewing gum vigorously, talking on their cell phones as they pace the course. Many of them were apprehensive as to what the others think of them. They cast furtive glances at the viewers passing by them. Some saw themselves as museum quality entities: The delusions of vanity.


After some consideration.
Two days after seeing this exhibit I traveled down to the University of Chicago to see the Smart Museum. In the first gallery of the permanent collection I was amused to discover an artwork composed of cutout shapes behind which were fluorescent lighting fixtures. One had a red light, one a yellow, and the third a blue. It was titled #9 New York, 1940, and the artist was Charles Biederman, a name I did not then know. This work had been created when Dan Flavin was seven years old. On seeing this work I shrugged and uttered: “There is nothing new under the sun”.

A week later I was at the Weisman Museum in Minneapolis and in the first gallery there was a brief career retrospective of the work of Charles Biederman, a man, I then learned, who had left Paris and New York and had worked for most of his life in Red Cloud, Minnesota. It was said that he had written extensively, and well, on the arts. Early in his adult life Biederman had studied and was strongly influenced by Cézanne. In Paris he was strongly influenced by Picasso. This influence is easy to discern in his paintings but when he moved into the area of applied materials, on edge, on the rectangular format, that influence had to be intellectually deciphered.

The interpretations tell us that Dan Flavin had studied art history. I have wondered if he knew Charles Biederman’s writings. (So far as I know this particular Biederman work was the only one he made using fluorescent lighting fixtures.) If it can be shown that Dan Flavin was familiar with them, I think we can then understand how the tradition in Western art works as a continuum.

We can also understand the relationship to the tradition if we remember that the French Impressionist painters, notably Renoir and Monet, were specifically interested in using pigment to create the sense of light and air in their paintings. Their reference within the tradition was the Italian Renaissance paintings of the Venetian school.

Many of Dan Flavin’s works are dedicated to other artists. It could be determined if this reference was to their ideas and their iconic styles, or if it was merely a tag used to indicate that this work continues the tradition.

His work, which might seem at first encounter to be “new” and “unusual”, is better understood, when seen in reference to the historic precedents, to be a variation within the tradition.

We should also view his work from the perspective of his association with the minimalists. We know that Matisse was influenced by Cézanne’s use of color…both made the statement that the color is the drawing. Picasso is credited with having taken form from Cézanne and to have developed Cézanne’s planar innovations. Among the minimalists, Agnes Martin concentrated almost exclusively on line, Donald Judd almost exclusively on form, and Dan Flavin on color, or light perceived as color. Each of them created art works that were presented as nothing more than what they are: the artwork is the thing in and of itself. I believe this is the basic assumption of what is now termed contemporary art.

Classic western art was existential in that it depicted the things of this earth: landscapes, figures, portraits, and still lives. There was an historical or anecdotal content that added to those works an experience of “feeling”, with feeling used to create a sense of symbolic experience. The subject of modern art was more nearly metaphysical: it exaggerated the plastic elements to emphasize the character of the emotional experience to be shared. Contemporary art has returned to the existential but the work is not representational or anecdotal, it does not stimulate an emotional response, it does not reference anything other than the materials it uses.

Agnes Martin uses a simple line and creates the sense of a meditative moment. Her work is clean, clearly stated, and pure. Dan Flavin has used color but without its emotional connotations. His works appear to me to be the result of working out intellectual concerns regarding the character of art. He appears to me to be exploring the boundaries of art. I might not understand his specific issues, but I feel that I have shared in what is his profound interest.

While I was in Chicago I also went to the Intuit Museum, a venue devoted to outsider art. That museum defined outsider art as that generally created by those who were experiencing obsessive/compulsive personality disorder. That was evident in the works shown. But what was also evident is that those artists began from a common starting place: they used picture space and relied on anecdote or abstract expressionism to express their sentiments. I have often wondered if artists consider the rectangle, (the picture format), or the pedestal to be obstacles to their expression. I think Dan Flavin shows us that while we might escape those two obstacles, we cannot move away from the plastic elements: color, line and form. He shows us that it is a legitimate endeavor to make art the subject of art: it extends the understanding of the artist and the observer. It also shows us that there can be a symbolic experience within the plastic elements in and of themselves, just as there is symbolic experience for physicists within mathematics.
It remains to be determined what the importance is, to us, in all of this. I found Dan Flavin’s works and this exhibition inspiring, although I missed a “something” akin to Goya’s brightly observed human comedy and his profound compassion for the human experience.