Electric Light Orchestrated: Dan Flavin at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas
Matthew Bourbon
Dan Flavin, untitled (to Jan and Ron Greenberg), 1972-73 and Dan Flavin, yellow and green fluorescent light, 8 ft. in a corridor measuring 8 ft. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York; Panza Collection, 1991
Dan Flavin’s electric lights vibrate as if they were alive. Pale, but intense, hues wash upon blank walls in a stimulating retrospective exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Interestingly, the radiating light of Flavin’s art, when seen en masse, has a greater impact than solitary work. Moving from one glowing installation to another, perceptual senses are sharpened as stiff tubes of color bombard one’s eyes and pulse against one’s body. Gradated colors flash, while a gentle, yet persistent, humming of fluorescent tubes forms a subtle melody singing as a descant in the background of the exhibition. Experiencing this sensory concert feels a bit like being a fly stuck in honey. One simply can’t escape the artificial glare and encompassing sound. The seduction is rich and potent, yet refined to the fundamentals of shape, color and–above all else–light.
Despite the work’s obsessive quality and elemental temperament, the art feels rather garish. Flavin mixes the refined language of Minimalism with something less obtuse and dirtier. Using commercial grade fluorescent tubes, Flavin’s works entraps us much like the neon signs that argue for our attention in storefronts and strip malls. Flavin counts on our need to be bathed in light. His fields of light projected against white walls are ethereal and almost otherworldly-yet the mechanisms, which he does not obscure, are mundane. Flavin shows us behind the curtain, so we can see the machine that performs the magic trick. Even though the tricks are revealed, the fixation on projected light has a quasi-religious aspect. Regardless, Flavin’s work seems to want to argue that such spiritual readings are too thin. Mystical connotations, such as those associated with Mark Rothko’s color blocks, while not entirely absent, are counterbalanced by the rudimentary structure of the fluorescent casings. There is certainly alchemy here, but we are not meant to merely stand in awe at that which we do not understand. He forces us to also examine the equipment that creates the visual transformation. Essentially, his work is an idealization with a common means. There is a vaguely uncomfortable pleasure that emerges from this juxtaposition of the elevated and the banal. There’s a manipulation that harkens to the unease felt at the pressures mounted against us by the advertising media.
Despite the uneasy coexistence of a romantic spectacle with a base reality, the pieces that push furthest towards a phenomenology are the strongest. The installations that contain specific cultural references, such as shapes implying buildings or Minimalist monuments leaning in corners, seem too restricted by their overt associations. Flavin’s art is not so interesting when he adopts obvious illustrative depiction or narrative example. His use of light as a seducer is most powerful when it allows our imagination free reign. The pieces really take life when they develop exacting experiential occurrences for us to partake. Think of his amazing alcove works, where he constructs hallways that cul-de-sac into fiery shows of vertical lights. Standing within one of these spaces is truly startling. The sheer force of the light grabs our person and physically alters our senses. Absorbing this pulsating light and then exiting to the regular gallery space is disorienting and speaks of the visceral impact of Flavin’s art. But such experiences are only possible if one is willing to accept the limits outlined by the restricted language offered. His work is a meditation on disembodied color and patterned shape that is only readable if our attention is focused without pre-existing expectations. A certain perceptual vulnerability is required. This can seem rather romantic for an artist associated with the operational rules of the Minimalists. Still, adopting a practice where one must use light bulbs, that will forever need replacement, seems a more generous and fallible process then the traditional dogma and purity associated with the Minimalists. Nothing is entirely crystalline and aesthetically sacred with Flavin’s projects. In fact, walking the exhibition, one often sees power outlets and the flickering light of dying bulbs. These scars upon an otherwise flawless structure make Flavin’s art more human than the domineering ecclesiastic tone of Donald Judd or Carl Andre.
The entertainment factor in the work also separates Flavin from his contemporaries. The work, in all its strict repetitiveness, still remains flashy. Take for instance the wall covered with circular fluorescent tubes, which looks like a set design for a low budget science fiction movie. In fact, if you are of a certain generation, much of Flavin’s work can arouse associations of Star Wars light sabers, or the glowing walls and illuminated monitors of many a Hollywood spacecraft. The simple use of fluorescent light as a medium inescapably suggests a kind of 1970s version of futurism.
Yet, because of the singularity of using lighted tubes, very few artists have developed work out of Flavin?s oeuvre. Those who are connected to Flavin relate to his art in some tangential fashion. James Turrell’s seemingly naturalistic concern with light is profoundly linked with Flavin’s. But Turrell seems more monastic about his perceptual investigations. Younger artists like Jeremy Blake connect more loosely to the colored abstraction of Flavin’s glaring light. Blake, for instance, does not follow Flavin’s tactics or medium, but instead works in the space of the computer, building complicated arrangements of color and form. While certainly not minimal, he does share some basic concerns with Flavin?s notion of painting via a mechanical medium. Perhaps the most direct descendent, however, is found in the work of Stephen Hendee. Here we see a similar use of fluorescent tubes, but behind a complicated beehive of geometric scrims. Hendee’s light-infused architecture extends the science fiction potential dormant in the more austere Flavin.
Re-examining an artist’s work, one can?t help but interrogate the art from our contemporary cultural viewpoint. While Flavin’s art may inform a few current artists, his vision remains uniquely his own. As with all retrospectives, some work captures our imagination and other work merely captures a bit of our time. For this, the first comprehensive Dan Flavin survey, I am left remembering less about specific pieces and more about my senses being profoundly altered by his acute orchestration of electric light.
