Let there be light

Andrew Lambirth is entranced by the central purity of Dan Flavin’s installations

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Gavin Mortimer

Why do the French hate J.D. Vance so much?

Many artists are involved to a greater or lesser degree with the depiction of light, but Dan Flavin (1933–96) made it his exclusive subject, and in the process was responsible for the apotheosis of the humble fluorescent tube. As an artist, Flavin was largely untaught, though he attended art history classes at Columbia University and drew passionately from an early age. He made his first light piece from a ready-made yellow fluorescent tube, entitled ‘The Diagonal of May 25, 1963’ and dedicated to Brancusi. It was exhibited the same year, and at once usefully associated Flavin with both Duchamp, king of the ready-made, and minimalism, the art movement promoting ‘less is more’ that was just then catching the eye of the discerning and fashion-conscious. Although Flavin was later to react against the minimalist label, insisting that he was an altogether more expansive artist, the categorisation has stuck.

The association with Duchamp proved especially helpful. The great man came to Flavin’s first solo show of lightworks in New York, blessed the proceedings by smiling and nodding, and then compounded his support by sponsoring the young artist for an award. As a consequence Flavin was able to develop his work, and by 1966 he was showing it in Europe. In essence it is very simple, but the beauty of it (at least from the artist’s point of view) is that it admits of endless permutations. Flavin took standard lengths of fluorescent tube, in units measuring two, four, six or eight feet, in a limited palette of ten colours, and mixed them together. His control of colour became subtler and more complex as he experimented with ultraviolet and back-lighting, and the range of effects he was able to achieve in terms of colour halation and ambient light is remarkable.