By Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter
Dallas, TX –
Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter: Dan Flavin was born in 1933, six years after the "official" birth of the fluorescent light. By the time Flavin was 30, the devout Catholic and Korean veteran had taken some art classes and produced a few works. They hang in the Modern's first gallery: basically, single-color canvases each with a light bulb on top. The Modern's chief curator, Michael Auping, says Flavin called them "Icons" because to him, they were sacred images. But in this period of postwar prosperity, Auping says there was more going on. The improvisational art movement called abstract expressionism, that often featured formless colors and non conventional subjects, was coming to an end.
Michael Auping, Chief Curator, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth: Abstract expressionism would get edged out by irreverent pop artists named Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and the pop artists kind of grabbed hold of the idea of American consumerism and Madison Avenue. But these younger artists, rather than going to Madison Avenue, went to the hardware store.
Zeeble: Auping says these "minimalists," Flavin among them, grabbed readily available products new to art. Just as painters used standard tubes of paint, Flavin favored standard-length fluorescent lights, sold in ten colors. He arranged them, like sculptures, against walls and in corners, then plugged them in. It was a bit shocking to general audiences, and intentionally so. Flavin and his contemporaries challenged viewers, asking, "What is art?"
Charles Wylie, Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art: They relied on basic forms, techniques and installation ideas to bring about the idea of immediate confrontation with the spectator.
Zeeble: That's Charles Wylie, Contemporary Art Curator at the Dallas Museum of Art, which lent a work for this show. Wylie loves Flavin's art for the moods they create, as does Michael Auping.
Auping: One moment, as they're turned on, there's this beautiful glowing line that just covers the surface of the wall. It even falls on your clothing. It's painting the air, as it were, with light. And it's a beautiful experience. The light is the work.
Zeeble: To Auping and Wylie, the effects are magical. Works range from cool, white, round fluorescent lights stacked against the wall in a triangle to straight colored bulbs in differing configurations. The colored light, says Auping, expertly blends on the white walls. He says it's harder than it looks.
Auping: Some say, "I could do that," but you can't put them in these configurations and control the light on a 6-foot wall so it just rolls down one edge of the wall, and make it almost like a water color. You can't do that.
Zeeble: "Dan Flavin: A Retrospective" runs through June 5th at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. For KERA 90.1, I'm Bill Zeeble.
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