Dan Flavin
New York, NY
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Columbia University, New York
New School for Social Research, New York
Flavin is a Minimalist artist best known for his installations that feature fluorescent light fixtures.
Never receiving formal instruction regarding art, his first solo show was held in 1961 at New York’s Judson Gallery. That same year, he began experiment with electric light, ultimately leading to his first work that featured fluorescent light released in 1963 called the diagonal of May 25, 1963. In 1964, he was given an award by the William and Norma Copley Foundation following a recommendation by Marcel Duchamp, the artistic pioneer linked closely to the Dada and Surrealist movements.
Flavin’s involvement with key art shows in the latter half of the 1960s earned him the reputation as one of the originators if Minimal art. In 1969, his first retrospective “fluorescent light, etc. Dan Flavin” traveled throughout North America. The Dia Art Foundation began purchasing his works in 1974 and in 1983, facilitating his largest permanent installation of nine works in a former firehouse in Bridgehampton, New York, now known as the Dan Flavin Art Institute.
Since his death in 1996, three other permanent installations have been erected; one in Milan in 1997, one in Houston in 1998 and one in 2000 at Donald Judd’s Marfa, Texas Chinati Foundation.
Zwirner & With New York, March 6 – May 3 2008 [ArtObserved]
