Dan Flavin Lights

"This book, published on the occasion of Dan Flavin: The Architecture of Light at the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, draws upon the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's extensive holdings of the artist's work.".

"New scholarship and interpretation of Flavin's work also appears in the form of three critical essays by experts and an extensive chronology, comprehensive bibliography, and exhibition history. In addition, this book includes Flavin's text, "'...in daylight or cool white.' an autobiographical sketch," originally published in Artforum in 1965, and two interviews with the artist - one from 1972 and the other from 1982."--BOOK JACKET.

In the early 1960s, US artist Dan Flavin (1933-1996) began using commercially available fluorescent tubes in standard sizes and colours to create an unmistakable œuvre. Precision and careful calculation are bound together with a sensual aura. By choosing the tubes as the material for his works, Flavin signalised the increasing proximity of art with everyday life and the consumer world. The ways in which they are presented are derived from principles of minimalist sobriety.

Showcasing Dan Flavin’s “corner,” “barrier,” and “corridor” works, this catalogue explores the artist’s core sculptural vocabulary and how his use of fluorescent light forged a new relationship between the art object and its surrounding architecture. This publication examines how Flavin’s light works, which he described as “situations,” function in space, occupying key positions that highlight how the rooms themselves are constructed. The exhibition is not only historically significant, as it mines early explorations in Flavin’s practice, but many of the works are reproduced for the first time in plates that accurately capture their colors. Published on the occasion of the 2015 eponymous exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, Corners, Barriers and Corridors takes as its point of departure the artist’s influential show, corners, barriers and corridors in fluorescent light from Dan Flavin, presented at the Saint Louis Art Museum in 1973. Above all, the photography reveals the unexpected and powerful interplay between the light of neighboring pieces and the space—the way the walls, floor, and various hues mingle to form unpredicted palettes that reveal what Michael Auping, following Donald Judd, calls the “exoskeleton.” These works, with their immediate relationship to architecture, not only function as color experiments but as structural explorations in light, and in his essay, Auping explores how Flavin’s investigations of corners, barriers, and corridors became an essential part of the way the artist understood space. This publication also features rarely seen photographs of Flavin installing his historic 1973 exhibition, as well as detailed notes by Alexandra Whitney about the works included in the St. Louis presentation. Designed by McCall Associates, in close collaboration with the Estate of Dan Flavin, this catalogue presents an especially significant body of work in a completely new way and offers a vital historical perspective on Flavin’s practice.

In making light his primary medium, Dan Flavin (1933-1996) established himself as one of the most innovative and significant artists of the minimalist movement. A new generation encountered Flavin’s work through the critically acclaimed exhibition Dan Flavin: A Retrospective, which opened in October 2004 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Dan Flavin: New Light includes essays that respond to this exhibition and to the renewed interest in Flavin’s work and its place in 20th-century art. In this volume, six leading scholars of contemporary art consider the ambiguities and multiple resonances of Flavin’s light works. Each addresses the ontological complexity of the work--object-based, yet "situational,” and painterly in its deployment of colored light--within the insistently sculptural world of minimalism. The book’s contributors interpret this tension by exploring Flavin’s early assemblages, the relationship of drawing to his installation practice, the specificity of his materials and their operation in actual space, and the openly ambivalent place of Flavin’s work within the history of late modernism. Also available from Yale University Press: DAN FLAVIN: A RETROSPECTIVE (ISBN 0-300-10632-7) DAN FLAVIN: THE COMPLETE LIGHTS (ISBN 0-300-10633-5)

In the early 1960s, US artist Dan Flavin (1933-1996) began using commercially available fluorescent tubes in standard sizes and colours to create an unmistakable œuvre. Precision and careful calculation are bound together with a sensual aura. By choosing the tubes as the material for his works, Flavin signalised the increasing proximity of art with everyday life and the consumer world. The ways in which they are presented are derived from principles of minimalist sobriety.

This collection of contemporary art, created by Giuseppe Panza di Biumo in over forty-five years of collecting is one of the most important collections of art from the last decades of the twentieth century. This fully illustrated book gives an account of the history of the collection, of loans to important museums and of exhibitions of the works from it at contemporary art museums around the world.

"Dan Flavin (1933-1996) is considered one of the most important and innovative artists of the late twentieth century. The simplicity and systematic character of his extraordinary work, along with his relentless exploration and ingenious discovery of an art of light, established him as a progenitor and chief exponent of Minimalism. Uniquely situated outside the mediums of painting and sculpture, the majority of Flavin's work after 1963 consists of art made from light. This landmark book-the first retrospective publication of Flavin's art since 1969-includes around 45 of the artist's most important light works, beginning with a pivotal series of constructed boxes with attached incandescent or fluorescent lights, called "icons," made from 1961 to 1963. Works spanning Flavin's career are discussed in depth, including examples that integrate light with the surrounding space and show the particular characteristics of blended fluorescent light, large-scale installations, and constructed corridors. The book also includes reproductions of Flavin's drawings, which show his thought processes and working methods. New scholarship and interpretation of Flavin's work appears in the form of three critical essays by experts, an extensive chronology, comprehensive bibliography, and exhibition history. In addition, Flavin's seminal text "`. . . in daylight or cool white.' an autobiographical sketch," originally published in Artforum in 1965, is included. Exquisitely designed and produced, with many new stunning color reproductions, Dan Flavin: A Retrospective captures the brilliance of this artist's contribution to and challenges of the art world and will be the authoritative volume on Flavin for years to come." - publisher description.