LACMA
May 15
Photos from LACMA
Joyce Chow in Blue
Joyce Chow in Green
(C) MBN 2007 Joyce Chow
DAN FLAVIN’S LIGHT WORKS ILLUMINATE AT LACMA
Los Angeles last stop of major national and international tour
Dan Flavin: A Retrospective
May 13–August 12, 2007
Los Angeles—The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Dan Flavin: A Retrospective, the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to minimalist artist Dan Flavin’s full career. Regarded as one of the most innovative artists of his generation, Flavin is best known for creating art almost entirely of commercially-available fluorescent light tubes. Although he used common materials, Flavin’s art is complex in design and often relates to specific architectural contexts. Co-curated by Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, and Tiffany Bell, Director of the Dan Flavin catalogue raisonné, the exhibition features more than forty of Flavin’s seminal fluorescent light works. Also presented is a special reconstruction of the corridors made for the E.F. Hauserman Co. showroom, formerly located at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. Dan Flavin: A Retrospective opens at LACMA on May 13, 2007 and remains on view through August 12, 2007—it will be the final destination of a multi-venue tour.
“Perhaps because Flavin is known so well as one of the founders of minimalism, his work has rarely been considered in all of its breadth and innovation before this retrospective,” said Michael Govan, LACMA Director. “Flavin was one of the inventors of what we now know as ‘installation art’ and his groundbreaking use of color and light in architecture has been emulated not only in art, but in design and architecture. I count him among the most important figures in twentieth century art.”
Organized by Dia Art Foundation in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Dan Flavin: A Retrospective showcases the chronological development of Flavin's work over the course of thirty years, demonstrating the various means through which he experimented with light, color, seriality, and the coordinates of interior space. The exhibition includes the full range of his work, many of which are specifically dedicated to modernist predecessors and contemporary artists who inspired him, such as Constantin Brancusi, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, and Henri Matisse. Other dedications reveal Flavin’s commitment to the politics of his time and his attempt to reinvent the genre of the commemorative monument.
Some of Flavin’s early works, such as his “icons” series made from 1961 to 1963, feature several constructed boxes with attached incandescent or fluorescent lights. Works such as icon I (the heart) (to the light of Sean McGovern which blesses everyone) (1961–62) signifies Flavin’s invention of an object that is neither a painting nor sculpture yet incorporates elements of both. Later, the artist moved into his most recognized style of art composed solely of fluorescent light. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s readymade, the diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi) (1963) is the first example of Flavin’s utilization of standardized, unaltered light tubes and comprises a yellow, eight-foot long fluorescent bulb available from hardware stores in prefabricated lengths and colors.
In 1964, Flavin dedicated a series of works to Russian Constructivist Vladimir Tatlin. His well-known “monuments” to V. Tatlin (1964–1981) mimics Tatlin’s ideas of Utopian architecture, and comprises the chief examples of Flavin’s principles of seriality and permutation. The range of Flavin's content is represented by pieces that include political subjects, such as monument 4 for those who have been killed in ambush (to P.K. who reminded me about death) (1966), an installation of four red fluorescent lights in the form of a crossbow that exude a powerful, but dim, bloodlike glow to commemorate the Vietnam War.
At each venue, the exhibition has been reshaped in content and presentation in relation to the architecture and opportunities that the spaces have provided. In Los Angeles, the exhibition will include a major reconstruction of three spectacular corridors Flavin made for the E.F. Hauserman Co. showroom—presented together for the first time since they were dismantled in 1984. Architects and designers Massimo and Lella Vignelli collaborated with Flavin to create a space for the showroom that evoked a dynamic architectural experience. For two of the corridors, Flavin places fluorescent lights at mid-point to bar the viewer from passing through them. One end of the corridor is yellow and pink, while the other end is green and yellow. The central corridor is open from one end to the other, and completely blue with angled light fixtures on the walls and ceiling. The installation opened at the Pacific Design Center in March, 1982, to great acclaim. Upon its dismantling, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles acquired one of the corridors, which will be included in LACMA’s presentation.
About Flavin
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. Afterward, he returned to New York to take various art classes at the Hans Hoffman School of Fine Arts, New School for Social Research, and Columbia University. While at Columbia in 1959, he began to make assemblages and collages. This lead to his first solo exhibition in 1961 at the Judson Gallery in New York, and later that same year, he began experimenting with the “icons.”
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. He became known as the progenitor 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.
Catalogues
Dan Flavin: A Retrospective is accompanied by an exhibition catalogue and catalogue raisonné. Both are co-published by Dia Art Foundation and Yale University Press, and represent over five years of scholarly research and previously unavailable information about Flavin’s work. The catalogue is the first comprehensive book about the artist and comprises three essays by Michael Govan, Tiffany Bell, and Brydon E. Smith, a selected exhibition list focusing on Flavin’s own installations, a comprehensive bibliography, and a chronology of his life. The 208-page publication, featuring 150 four-color and forty black-and-white illustrations, is available for purchase for $45 at the LACMA Plaza Gift Store.
is accompanied by an exhibition catalogue and catalogue raisonné. Both are co-published by Dia Art Foundation and Yale University Press, and represent over five years of scholarly research and previously unavailable information about Flavin’s work. The catalogue is the first comprehensive book about the artist and comprises three essays by Michael Govan, Tiffany Bell, and Brydon E. Smith, a selected exhibition list focusing on Flavin’s own installations, a comprehensive bibliography, and a chronology of his life. The 208-page publication, featuring 150 four-color and forty black-and-white illustrations, is available for purchase for $45 at the LACMA Plaza Gift Store.In addition, Tiffany Bell has prepared a catalogue raisonné featuring complete photographic documentation of Flavin’s light works. Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights 1961–1996 is the first publication to present all of Flavin’s lights together and includes a photograph and/or a graphic diagram for each work represented as well as comprehensive information about its construction, exhibition history, and appearance in other publications. The 432-page cloth-bound boxed edition, which includes 520 four-color and sixty black-and-white illustrations as well as a copy of the exhibition catalogue, is available for purchase for $160 at the LACMA Plaza Gift Store. Public ProgramsConversations with Artists
James Welling
Thursday, May 31, 7 pm
Bing Theater
James Welling works within a wide range of photographic mediums in his exploration of the nature and boundaries of photography. In conjunction with the exhibition, Welling will discuss his own work, his longtime interest in Flavin’s art, and the relationship of Flavin’s work to photography. Free, no reservations required.
Jennifer Steinkamp
Thursday, June 7, 7 pm
Bing Theater
Installation artist Jennifer Steinkamp uses video and new media in order to explore ideas about space, motion, and perception. She discusses her work, including her own use of light in her art, as it complements the exhibition. Free, no reservations required.
Special Exhibition Lecture: Fluorescent Light as Art
Tiffany Bell
July 15, 2 pm
Brown Auditorium
Exhibition co-curator Tiffany Bell examines Flavin’s development of fluorescent light as an artistic medium and how he conforms his practice to contemporary conventions in the marketplace. Free, no reservations required.
Guided Tours
Free, no reservations required.
Tuesdays and Saturdays, 2 p.m.
NexGen Family Sundays: Light, Color, and Space
Los Angeles Times Central Court
June 3, 10, 17, 24, and 31; 12:30–3:15 pm
Families can experiment with light, color, and space to create art installations. Free, no reservations required.
Exhibition Tour
Before opening at LACMA, Dan Flavin: A Retrospective traveled to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (October 3, 2004–January 9, 2005); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (February 27, 2005–June 5, 2005); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (July 1, 2005–October 30, 2005); The Hayward Gallery, London (January 19, 2006–April 2, 2006); Museé d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris (June 9–October 8, 2006); and Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (November 22, 2006–April 9, 2007).
Credit:
:Dan Flavin: A Retrospective is organized by Dia Art Foundation in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition and accompanying publications are made possible in part by The Henry Luce Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Lannan Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Los Angeles presentation is sponsored by Lexus and supported in part by the Frederick R. Weisman Philanthropic Foundation.
is organized by Dia Art Foundation in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition and accompanying publications are made possible in part by The Henry Luce Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Lannan Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the National Endowment for the Arts.The Los Angeles presentation is sponsored by Lexus and supported in part by the Frederick R. Weisman Philanthropic Foundation.About LACMA: In April 2006, Michael Govan became CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). He is the seventh person to hold the position of Director in the museum’s 41-year history. Established as an independent institution in 1965, LACMA has assembled a permanent collection that includes approximately 100,000 works of art spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present, making it the premier encyclopedic visual arts museum in the western United States. Located in the heart of one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, the museum uses its collection and resources to provide a variety of educational and cultural experiences for the people who live in, work in, and visit Los Angeles. LACMA offers an outstanding schedule of special exhibitions, as well as lectures, classes, family activities, film programs and world-class musical events.
LACMA is located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles CA, 90036. For more information about LACMA and its programming, log on to www.lacma.org.
Museum Hours: Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, noon–8 pm; Friday, noon–9 pm; Saturday and Sunday, 11 am–8 pm; closed Wednesday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Call 323 857-6000, or www.lacma.org for more information.
Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, noon–8 pm; Friday, noon–9 pm; Saturday and Sunday, 11 am–8 pm; closed Wednesday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Call 323 857-6000, or www.lacma.org for more information.
General LACMA Admission: Adults $9; students 18+ with ID and senior citizens 62+ $5. Admission (except to specially ticketed exhibitions) is free every evening after 5 pm, the second Tuesday of every month, and for children 17 and under.
Adults $9; students 18+ with ID and senior citizens 62+ $5. Admission (except to specially ticketed exhibitions) is every evening after 5 pm, the second Tuesday of every month, and for children 17 and under.
Please note: LACMA is free every evening after 5 pm.
####
LACMA is free every evening after 5 pm
