The earliest traces of human culture and knowledge are found in prehistoric rock carvings. The people who made them just wanted to put down on a more permanent form some impressions they had about what life was like. Were they paintings, drawings, sculptures? No one cared.
Dan Flavin started producing artworks with fluorescent light in 1961, first working within the confines of the limited sizes and colours of lamps available in hardware stores but then exploring more options, expanding the palette until his death in 1996. When I first became aware of his pieces I thought of them as sculptures, thinking they would fit better close to Pietà than to Madonna. Since then I realized some people consider them paintings, at least the more simple ones, bi-dimensional lines mounted on walls. And, well, if J. M. W. Turner was known as "the painter of light" and continues being celebrated for the way in which he depicted it, isn't it possible to consider Flavin a successor, someone who took the proto-abstract experiences of Turner further? And isn't the way his light blends close to paint being mixed to achieve new colors? Those are some of the interesting considerations you can make about his work, but it unnecessarily puts Flavin in a box. Notice how his work reflects around the gallery, consider how shadows and space become important, realize how the glow can make the very architecture of the museum disappear when a piece is left in a corner (one of his best known works is an homage to Vladimir Tatlin, so it's no wonder he took the hint from the architect and his fellow "last futurist" Kazimir Malevich, who hanged works from corners to refer to the traditional placement of religious icons in Russia). In reality, most of his works are drawings, because even when you are buying something as gorgeous as "Untitled (to Barnett Newman to commemorate his simple problem, red, yellow, and blue)", from 1970, you are really just acquiring a certificate of ownership that specifies the colours and sizes of the light fixtures and almost always features his doodles.
Untitled (For Ksenija) though is clearly not "just" a drawing, a painting or even a sculpture, but an absolutely immersive installation. It was conceived for the opening of Munich's Lenbachhaus underground gallery, the 100-meter long Kunstbau, in 1994.
Dan Flavin started producing artworks with fluorescent light in 1961, first working within the confines of the limited sizes and colours of lamps available in hardware stores but then exploring more options, expanding the palette until his death in 1996. When I first became aware of his pieces I thought of them as sculptures, thinking they would fit better close to Pietà than to Madonna. Since then I realized some people consider them paintings, at least the more simple ones, bi-dimensional lines mounted on walls. And, well, if J. M. W. Turner was known as "the painter of light" and continues being celebrated for the way in which he depicted it, isn't it possible to consider Flavin a successor, someone who took the proto-abstract experiences of Turner further? And isn't the way his light blends close to paint being mixed to achieve new colors? Those are some of the interesting considerations you can make about his work, but it unnecessarily puts Flavin in a box. Notice how his work reflects around the gallery, consider how shadows and space become important, realize how the glow can make the very architecture of the museum disappear when a piece is left in a corner (one of his best known works is an homage to Vladimir Tatlin, so it's no wonder he took the hint from the architect and his fellow "last futurist" Kazimir Malevich, who hanged works from corners to refer to the traditional placement of religious icons in Russia). In reality, most of his works are drawings, because even when you are buying something as gorgeous as "Untitled (to Barnett Newman to commemorate his simple problem, red, yellow, and blue)", from 1970, you are really just acquiring a certificate of ownership that specifies the colours and sizes of the light fixtures and almost always features his doodles.
Untitled (For Ksenija) though is clearly not "just" a drawing, a painting or even a sculpture, but an absolutely immersive installation. It was conceived for the opening of Munich's Lenbachhaus underground gallery, the 100-meter long Kunstbau, in 1994.
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