"Parejas europeas, y otras"
por Michael Govan
Dan Flavin
1/4/1933 - 29/11/1996
En 1962, Dan Flavin introdujo sus primeros experimentos estéticos con arte de luz eléctrica: pinturas monocromáticas cuadradas con estructuras y lámparas asociadas, las cuales él juzgó "íconos". Usó el término irónicamente en relación a su contexto religioso tradicional, explicando:
mis íconos difieren de un Cristo bizantino sostenido en majestad; son anónimos y sin gloria. Son tan mudos e indistinguibles como el funcionamiento de nuestra arquitectura. Mis íconos no se levantan por encima del salvador bendecido en catedrales elaboradas. Son concentraciones construidas que celebran habitaciones estériles. Traen una luz limitada.(1)
Desde 1963, Flavin ha evitado toda forma de pintura o collage en favor de lo simple y sin decoración, tubos y estructuras fluorescentes producidos comercialmente, y ha trabajado exclusivamente en ese medio desde entonces. Alrededor de 1965, resumió efectivamente los principales componentes de su arte:
A tiempo, llegué a estas conclusiones sobre qué había encontrado en la luz fluorescente, y sobre lo que podía ser hecho con ella. Ahora, el espacio interior y sus partes de pared, piso y techo, podían soportar esta luz pero no la restringirían excepto para incluirla...
Dándome cuenta de esto, supe que el espacio real de un cuarto podía ser quebrado y que se podía jugar con él plantando ilusiones con luz real (luz eléctrica) en las juntas cruciales de la composición de la habitación. Por ejemplo, si se pone un tubo fluorescente de 264 cm. en la vertical de una esquina, se puede destruir esa esquina por el fulgor y la duplicación de sombras. Un pedazo de pared se puede desintegrar visualmente del todo, transformándose en un triángulo separado, hundiendo una diagonal de luz de un extremo al otro de la pared; es decir, enfocada al suelo, por ejemplo.
...¿Qué ha sido el arte para mi?
En el pasado, lo he conocido (básicamente) como una secuencia de decisiones implícitas para combinar las tradiciones de pintura y escultura en la arquitectura con actos de luz eléctrica definiendo el espacio.(2)
A pesar de la dedicación de cada obra sin título a una persona o a una reflexión personal, y de su propio conocimiento profundo del abrumador simbolismo histórico de la luz en el arte,(3) Flavin ha siempre rehusado a ligar cualquier significancia simbólica o referencial a sus obras:
Es lo que es, y no es nada más... Todo es claramente, abiertamente, planamente deliberado. No hay una abrumadora espiritualidad con la cual se suponga que hay que contactarse. Me gusta que mi uso de la luz sea abiertamente situacional, en el sentido de que no hay una invitación a meditar, a contemplar. Está en una situación de "entrar y salir". Y es muy fácil de entender. Uno puede no pensar en la luz de hecho, pero yo lo hago. Y es, como dije, un arte tan plano, tan abierto, tan directo, como nunca encontrarán.(4)
Habiendo empleado estructuras lumínicas producidas en masa, buscando negar a su luz cualquier significancia trascendental, y negando también la simple función utilitaria de esas luces llamándolas "arte", la ironía de los gestos y el uso de términos como "íconos"en Flavin son obvios. Menos obvio es el potencial plástico casi ilimitado que el artista ha ideado y demostrado a lo largo de los últimos treinta años en su sistemática aplicación del vocabulario limitado de las luces disponibles comercialmente y de los tamaños y colores de las lámparas: cuatro largos básicos: 66, 132, 198, y 264 cm.; y nueve colores posibles: azul, verde, rosa, rojo, amarillo y cuatro variantes de blanco. Las estructuras circulares que constituyen untitled (to a man, George McGovern) fueron incluídas en el vocabulario de Flavin en 1972.
La simplicación del lenguaje formal de Flavin puede relacionarse con el trabajo de sus contemporáneos, como Donald Judd, quien fue etiquetado como artista minimalista debido a su reducción de los dispositivos formales, y por su énfasis puesto más en lo racional y serial que en las formas gestuales, y en lo fenomenológico más que en los resultados simbólicos o narrativos. Flavin también proclama respeto por ciertos artistas abstractos modernistas como Constantin Brancusi, Piet Mondrian, y los innovadores de la vanguardia rusa, particularmente Vladimir Tatlin, a quien Flavin dedico su mas sostenida serie de obras: "monuments" for V. Tatlin" (1964-1982). Lejos de lo accidental, la relación con el arte de Tatlin ilumina tanto las inversiones formales en las obras de Flavin como su contexto dentro de la historia del arte.
Presentada en una exposición de 1915 junto a la pintura de Kasimir Malevich Black Square (Cuadrado Negro), la primera gran obra pública de Tatlin fue una instalación escultural de materiales industriales en collage. Ambos trabajos fueron instalados en las esquinas de la galería, llamando la atención de esa manera sobre los espacios marginales de la sala, y haciendo referencia, al mismo tiempo, a los tradicionales íconos religiosos que cuelgan de las esquinas de los hogares rusos. La ocupación de las esquinas de Tatlin y Malevich con sus nuevos "íconos" abstractos fue un intento de crear un enteramente radical, único y dinámico vocabulario artístico que expresara las aspiraciones humanas sobre la inminente revolución industrial y social del siglo XX. En la preocupación en toda la carrera de Flavin por las esquinas de las galerías resuena implícitamente el gesto ruso de comprometer el espacio usualmente no utilizado en la pintura y escultura tradicional; sin embargo, sus obras niegan el simbolismo religioso y la ambición de una utopía social de las vanguardias artísticas personificadas en la obra de Tatlin.
La obra más grande de Tatlin fue su irrealizada torre espiral The Monument to the Third International (El Monumento para la Tercera Internacional), por la cual los "monumentos" de Flavin llevan su nombre. Sin embargo, Flavin hace notar: "siempre uso 'monumentos' para enfatizar el humor irónico de los monumentos temporarios. Estos 'monumentos' solamente sobreviven mientras el sistema de luz está en funcionamiento (2100 horas)".(5) La apropiación del artista de las luces comerciales, producto paradigmático de nuestra sociedad altamente industrializada, es presentada no como una celebración atemporal de una cultura revolucionaria como hacía Tatlin, sino como un hecho ontológico: tangible y temporal.
Flavin emplea una referencia humorística, histórica de Tatlin precisamente para separar sus obras del tipo de simbolismo artístico que Tatlin adscribía a sus trabajos. Sin embargo, y al mismo tiempo, claramente revela la trágica personalidad humana de Tatlin y su "frustrada, insistente actitud de intentar combinar arte e ingeniería".(6)
Las ocho obras de esquina dedicadas a las parejas europeas, son obras que mantienen una relación similarmente irónica con su contexto en tanto arte, en tanto luces, y en tanto objetos dedicados a 18 personas reales (nueve parejas). La ironía sirve para enfatizar, por contraste, la sinceridad de la presencia no adulterada, radiante y efímera de las obras como objetos fenoménicos.
Source:
1) Dan Flavin, en Dan Flavin: three installations in fluorescent light (Cologne: Wallraf-Richartz-Museum y el Kunsthalle Koln, (1973-74), pag. 83. Este comentario esta tomada de una entrada al libro "grabada", que data del 9 de agosto de 1962. (2) Dan Flavin "'... in daylight or cool white': an autobiographical sketch", Artforum 4, no. 4 (diciembre de 1965), pag. 24. Flavin reviso y republico este texto en varios catalogos de exposicones. (3) Flavin asistio a un seminario catolico, aun cuando lo dejo, comenzo su educación artistica con arte religioso. Flavin es tambien un conocido coleccionista de arte antiguo y moderno. (4) Michael Gibson, "The strange case of the fluorescent tube", Art International 1 (otoño 1987), pag. 105. (5) Citado en Suzanne Munchnic, "Flavin exhibit: his artistry comes to light", Los Angeles Times, 23 de abril, 1984. (6) Ibid. Citado de un texto de pared escrito por Flavin para la exhibicoin temporaria del Mueseum of Contemporary Art " 'monuments' to V. Tatlin from Dan Flavin " (1984).
Writing chosen by the artist
By Dan Flavin
1965
Thus far, I have made a considered attempt to poise silent electric light in crucial concert point to point, line by line and otherwise in the box that is a romm. This dramatic decoration has benn founded in the young tradition of a plastic revolution which gripped Russian art only forty years ago. My joy is to try to build from that "incomplete" experience as I see fit.
(from The Artists Say section of the Summer, 1965 edition of art voices magazine)
What has art been for me?
In the past, I have known it (basically)as a sequence of implicit decisions to combine traditions of painting and sculpture in architecture with acts of electric light defining space and, recently, as more progressive structural proposals about these vibrant instruments which have severalized past recognitions and increased them into almost effortless yet insistent mental patterns which I may not neglect. I want to reckon with more lamps on occasion -at least for the time being.
(from the autobiographical essay "...in daylight or cool white")
1966
Art is what a self-recognized artist thinks it to be. A generosity of his communicable result is not even implied.
1966-1973
"some remarks..."
As I have said for several years, I believe that art is shedding its vaunted mystery for a common sense of keenly realized decoration. Symbolizing is dwindling -becoming slight. We are pressing downward toward no art- a mutual sense of psychologically indifferent decoration - a neutral pleasure of seeing known to everyone.
I know now that I can reiterate any part of my fluorescent light system as adequate. Elements of parts of that system simply alter in situation installation. They lack the look of a history. I sense no stylistic or structural development of any significance whitin my proposal -only shifts in partitive emphasis- modifying and addable without intrinsic change.
All my diagrams, even the oldest, seem applicable again and continually. It is as though my system synonymizes its past, present and future states without incurring a loss relevance. It is curious to feel self-denied of a progressing development, if only for a few years.
Electric light is just another instrument. I have no desire to contrive fantasies mediumistically or sociologically over it or beyond it. Future art and the lack of that would surely reduce such squandered speculations to silly trivia anyhow...
... the lamps will go out (as they should, no doubt). Somehow I believe that the changing standard lighting system should support my idea within it. I will try to maintain myself this way. It may work out. The medium bears the artist...
...my own proposal has become mainly an indoor routine of placing strips of fluorescent light. It has benn mislabeled sculpture by people who should know better.
In the beginning, and for some time thereafter, I, too, was taken with easy, almost exclusive recognitions of fluorescent light as image. Now I Know that the physical fluorescent light tube has never dissolved or disappeared by entering the physical field of its own light as you have stated. At first sight, it appeared to do that, especially when massed tightly with reciprocal glass reflections resulting as within "the nominal three" but then, with a harder look, one saw that each tube maintained steady and distinct contours despite its internal act of ultra-violet light which caused the inner fluorescent coating of its glass container to emit the visible light. The physical fact of the tube as object in place prevailed whether switched on or off. (In spite of my emphasis here on the actuality of fluorescent light, I still feel that the composite term "image-object" best describes my use of the medium.)
What I have written further explains (it even alters) notions contained in the last paragraphs of "...in daylight or cool white" and denies current interest on my part in what appears to be metaphysical thought about light and related visual activity.
My drawing is not at all inventive about itself, it is an instrument not a resultant.
One's proposal challenges what one thinks art might become (even its existence). Asking out about whether or not art exists has developed into an intellectual pose after Duchamp's lead. It is gilding the ego and not worth much to one's colleagues.
1967
From a letter of April 27, 1967 to Miss Elizabeth C. Baker, Managing Editor of Art News:
The equipment which I deploy seems to me to be neither ugly nor handsome.
"There is no room for mysticism in the Pepsi denigration", is a quote of mine for a survey (of artists) during the last year. I mean tha remark emphatically. My fluorescent tubes never "burn out" desiring a god.
I prefer the term "proposal" and endeavor to use it accurately. I know no "work" as my art.
For a few years, I have deployed a system of diagramming designs for fluorescent light in situations. Of course, I was not immediately aware of that convenience and its inherently fascinating changes. I assume that it "developed" without my explicit or regular recognition. Also, a number of diagrams had to accumulate before a kind of reciprocity could obtain. Now, the system does not proceed; it is simply applied. Incidentally, I have discovered that no diagram is inappropriate for my file. None need be prevented, suspended or discarded for lack of quality. Each one merely awaits coordination again and again. Sometimes, adjustments or new variants are implied. Then, and only then, do I think to move my pencil once more. I am delighted by this understanding.
Yes, fluorescent light fixtures are unwieldy to place, particularly away from a flat surface. I am conscious about being exceedingly careful with that part. I aim constantly for clarity and distinction first in the pattern of the tubes and then with that of the supporting pans. But, with or without color, I never neglect the design.
From a reply of June 15, 1967 :
I find the invitation to participate in your untitled "minimal art" exhibition objectionable. I do not enjoy the designation of my proposal as that of some dubious, facetious, epithetical, proto-historic "movement". (I realize that this critical contrivance did not originate with you, but you have adopted it with such apparent gullibility.)
Impromptu flickers from Billy Who?, lasers through the night, "Lights Cancelling Orbits", numbered avenings of inept art on technotivity in the Armory do not inform me about my effort. That proposal is whole now and has been so. It requires no technological embellishment nor must it join the technocratic, "sci-fic" art as progress cult for continuing realization. Moreover, I do not feel compelled to hope for a more wonderful day before the fact in promo-proto-art history. I am not anxious to prefer to speculate against posterity. I like thinking here and now without sententious alibis.
Thank you for persevering. I am exhausted, too.
Best wishes and best regards to you.
(signed)
Quick, available comprehension is intended for participants in my installations. (One should not have to pause aver art any longer.)
From a reply of June 17, 1967 to Jan van der Marck, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago:
...I do not like the term "environment" associated with my proposal. It seems to me to imply conditions and perhaps an invitation to comfortable residence. Such usage would denu a sense of direct and difficult visual artifice in the same sense that to confront vibrating fluorescent light for some time ought to be disturbing for most participants.
Also, I intend rapid comprehensions - get in and out situations. I think that one has explicit moments with such particular light - space. Now, I have witnessed these moments in situations frequently enough not to be burdened by them. I know them and forget sufficiently. The installations are completed, lighted and disassembled. Clarity obtains in my mind, after all.
...Before I forget, please do not refer to my effort as sculpture and to me as sculptor. I do not handle and fashion three-dimensioned still works, even as to Barbara Rose's Juddianed "specific objects". I feel apart from problems of sculpture and painting but, there is no need to re-tag me and my part. I have realized that there need not be a substitute for old orthodoxy anyhow.
From a reply of June 11, 1967 to Ira Licht, an art historian:
Frankly, I feel that there is no interest in posing a problem as to whether art within electric light could also be utilitarian. For myself, I would not resist "public service".
1972
I don't want to impose separate sculptural ego dumps as public works. I don't want to rival architecture and public spaces insistently grandiosely. I have in the past and do intend to continue so now adapt my art carefully and complementary publicly. But that's easy for me. I admire the area of interest. (Incidentally, I lost what I sensed was "the right time" for my own potential education in architecture to a four-year tour of duty, mainly with the Air Weather Service within United Nations military forces during the past Korean War.)
What I have found to be difficult, even risky, in public service, and what may continue to be, is maintaining an ironic differentiation between what I must and might have for myself, and possibly for others, as art apart and the ordinary mechanical design solutions of the job to be done - say, useless, intensely thought artifice of art, particularly patterned and lighted once more, and discreetly balanced with an arrangement of sufficient numbers of lamps for useful illumination. But apparently art and design must be processed within each other at once. And finally, from the constant fusion, I have to be able to recognize art because I prefer it. Otherwise, broad concern and support for artists to perform in public is still principally waining in this country, but therein is another essay which I cannot perpetrate here and now.
(This statement was an addendum to an article "Notes on an exposition of cornered installations by Dan Flavin set to celebrate ten years of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery" by James Wood of the staff of that museum. It was published in Studio International in December, 1972.)
1973
"...on drawing and diagramming"
(From the catalogue drawings and diagrams 1963-1972 by Dan Flavin, Volume 1, of Emily S Rauh for an exposition of the same name from January 26 through March 1, 1973 in the St. Louis Art Museum.)
I have come to understand that, for me, drawing and diagramming are mainly what little it takes to keep a record of thought however to whatever use whenever. Within my reciprocating system for fluorescent light, such continuous retention is constantly required. One never knows when former notations will become reassumed as relatively pertinent. The system is as active as I can think within and for it. Now, I am mostly satisfied with my understanding.
1974
By the mid 1960's, formal artistry of printmaking in America had become principally a reductive mimicry of painting problems (with wordy, reproductive mimeo-photo-copying remaining to be seen and re examined thensome thereafter) therefore, those painterly colour bearing processes of silkscreen, lithography and even photo-offset lithography, etc. got emphatic use - and abuse for impersonal, non-handmade, big to "unlimited" editioning as though merely mechanical commercial reproduction.
Drawing directly toward printing through drypoint, etching, crayoned lithography, etc. became relatively neglected. It was as though most artists could find no further use for those simply straight forward means disposed so well through centuries past by Dûrer, Rembrandt, Goya, Daumier, Whistler, Degas, and Toulouse-Lautrec.
Well, finally, after some years of intermittent consideration and hesitation about practicing printing at all, I've determined to draw to print, too. And I sense that this present simply sketched set of lithographs, "-for one walled circular fluorescent light", once again advances the attitude sufficiently.
(This statement was prepared for the Multiples Newsletter, May 1974.)
1975
I am just not that pretentious draughtsman so egotistically compelled to demonstrate the masterly artifice of a would be great graphic craft, of seemingly endless, even tireless to tiresome, flourishes of pencil, pen and brush. I haven't time for that; for, when I stop to record an idea (which isn't always), I must put brief, impetuous marks, sudden summary jottings within 3 x 5 inches of a ringed back notebook page, those of a kind of intimate idiosyncratic, synoptic shorthand (by now, mainly my "style"). That an extensive and impressive modular-architectural system of circular fluorescent light may become proposed thusly is just another of those terrific ironies of art. And I thrive on them.
These so personal memos of mine don't take well to the detached isolation of exhibitional framing, but, when you might choose to examine some of them, please try to understand that Franz Meyer and I can hardly offer so much paper work to you in his ordinarily tasteful, pretentious, general museum setting otherwise.
And Franz and I have elected to provide so much from such a relatively brief, recent period of time (principally form 1972-1975) in order to be exhaustively informative for those of you who might want such study. Nevertheless, please don't be overwhelmed with all, pass them by and, hopefully, enjoy yourself a bit.
Best regards, Dan Flavin
(This statement was prepared for the exposition of drawings, diagrams, prints and posters with two installations in fluorescent light by Dan Flavin, Kunstmuseum Basel, March 8 to April 16, 1975.)