Dan Flavin Follow untitled daylight and cool white fluorescent light 48 x 48 in. (121.9 x 121.9 cm.) square across a corner Executed in 1970, this work is number 1 from an edition of 5, and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.
Condition Report Request Condition Report Thank you for your request. The Condition Report will be sent shortly. Contact Us * Required Send me the Report Via Email Fax Contact Specialist Cancel Provenance Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Munich Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1970) Sotheby's, New York, November 12, 2003, lot 50 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Cologne, Galerie Heiner Friedrich, three near square cornered installations from Dan Flavin , November 3 - 21, 1970 Munich, Galerie Tanit, Dan Flavin Donald Judd Sol LeWitt , March 8 - May 15, 1985 Literature Laszlo Glozer, "Quadrat im Lichthof", Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , 1970, p. 9 Michael Govan and Tiffany Bell, Dan Flavin The Complete Lights 1961-1996 , New York, 2004, no. 259, p. 294 (another example illustrated) Catalogue Essay "One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do. And it is, as I said, as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find." – Dan Flavin Beginning in 1963, Dan Flavin embarked on what would become a career-long investigation into light as his signature artistic medium, radically laying the groundwork for installation and environmental art in the second half of the twentieth century. A pioneer of Minimalism, Flavin rejected the gestural, emotional abstraction championed in the immediate aftermath of the War in favor of clean lines, austerity, and purity of form. Working with mass-produced, fluorescent light bulbs, he explored the potential of infinite variation through a fixed system of color, line, and of course, luminosity. Remarkably, Flavin worked with just ten hues – blue, green, pink, yellow, red, ultraviolet, and four shades of white – and a few commercially available tube lengths throughout his prolific career, producing a body of work that is at once both extraordinarily diverse and distinctly his own. As demonstrated in untitled , 1970 and untitled , 1984, Flavin’s light works are architectural masterpieces, designed specifically for the environments they transform. In both of these works, which are installed in the corner of a room, Flavin integrates the surrounding architecture, explaining, “I knew that the actual space of a room could be broken down and played with by planting illusions of real light (electric light) at crucial junctures in the room’s composition.” (Dan Flavin quoted in Jeffrey Weiss, ed., Dan Flavin New Light , New Haven, 2006, p. 126) Flavin designed works for walls, floors, ceilings, hallways, and entire rooms, sometimes taking over full museums or galleries – but the corner remained his most revered space. He was unequivocally inspired by Russian avant-garde artists Vladmir Tatlin and Kazemir Malevich, who, in the early 1900s, daringly installed their works in corners as a means of eschewing the traditional frame and instead projecting art into “real space”. In designing works specifically for the corner, Flavin too challenged conventional notions of painting and sculpture, pushing this concept one step further by utilizing an industrially produced material as the foundation of his practice. untitled from 1970 is an elegant exploration of atmospheric rigor in the purest of colors. Flavin experimented with four variations of white throughout his career: cool white, daylight, warm white, and soft white. In untitled , a mixture of daylight and cool white saturates the environment with an intense luminosity. Bathed in a reverberating diffuse of atmospheric light, the viewer is transported into an alternate world of meditative calm. Like Robert Ryman whose monochromatic paintings expertly explore the boundless subtleties of the color white, Flavin similarly experiments with delicate tonal variation in untitled . The similarities between the two minimalist masters can also be seen in the importance they placed on their respective art objects’ effect on and relationship with the environments they inhabit, both establishing the tenets of installation art
Dan Flavin Follow untitled daylight and cool white fluorescent light 48 x 48 in. (121.9 x 121.9 cm.) square across a corner Executed in 1970, this work is number 1 from an edition of 5, and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.
Condition Report Request Condition Report Thank you for your request. The Condition Report will be sent shortly. Contact Us * Required Send me the Report Via Email Fax Contact Specialist Cancel Provenance Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Munich Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1970) Sotheby's, New York, November 12, 2003, lot 50 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Cologne, Galerie Heiner Friedrich, three near square cornered installations from Dan Flavin , November 3 - 21, 1970 Munich, Galerie Tanit, Dan Flavin Donald Judd Sol LeWitt , March 8 - May 15, 1985 Literature Laszlo Glozer, "Quadrat im Lichthof", Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , 1970, p. 9 Michael Govan and Tiffany Bell, Dan Flavin The Complete Lights 1961-1996 , New York, 2004, no. 259, p. 294 (another example illustrated) Catalogue Essay "One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do. And it is, as I said, as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find." – Dan Flavin Beginning in 1963, Dan Flavin embarked on what would become a career-long investigation into light as his signature artistic medium, radically laying the groundwork for installation and environmental art in the second half of the twentieth century. A pioneer of Minimalism, Flavin rejected the gestural, emotional abstraction championed in the immediate aftermath of the War in favor of clean lines, austerity, and purity of form. Working with mass-produced, fluorescent light bulbs, he explored the potential of infinite variation through a fixed system of color, line, and of course, luminosity. Remarkably, Flavin worked with just ten hues – blue, green, pink, yellow, red, ultraviolet, and four shades of white – and a few commercially available tube lengths throughout his prolific career, producing a body of work that is at once both extraordinarily diverse and distinctly his own. As demonstrated in untitled , 1970 and untitled , 1984, Flavin’s light works are architectural masterpieces, designed specifically for the environments they transform. In both of these works, which are installed in the corner of a room, Flavin integrates the surrounding architecture, explaining, “I knew that the actual space of a room could be broken down and played with by planting illusions of real light (electric light) at crucial junctures in the room’s composition.” (Dan Flavin quoted in Jeffrey Weiss, ed., Dan Flavin New Light , New Haven, 2006, p. 126) Flavin designed works for walls, floors, ceilings, hallways, and entire rooms, sometimes taking over full museums or galleries – but the corner remained his most revered space. He was unequivocally inspired by Russian avant-garde artists Vladmir Tatlin and Kazemir Malevich, who, in the early 1900s, daringly installed their works in corners as a means of eschewing the traditional frame and instead projecting art into “real space”. In designing works specifically for the corner, Flavin too challenged conventional notions of painting and sculpture, pushing this concept one step further by utilizing an industrially produced material as the foundation of his practice. untitled from 1970 is an elegant exploration of atmospheric rigor in the purest of colors. Flavin experimented with four variations of white throughout his career: cool white, daylight, warm white, and soft white. In untitled , a mixture of daylight and cool white saturates the environment with an intense luminosity. Bathed in a reverberating diffuse of atmospheric light, the viewer is transported into an alternate world of meditative calm. Like Robert Ryman whose monochromatic paintings expertly explore the boundless subtleties of the color white, Flavin similarly experiments with delicate tonal variation in untitled . The similarities between the two minimalist masters can also be seen in the importance they placed on their respective art objects’ effect on and relationship with the environments they inhabit, both establishing the tenets of installation art
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
