On and
Off Art
Dan Flavin: A Retrospective
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
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The tragic implications,
such as they are, occur to Flavin early on in a meditation concerning wounded
Apollinaire, he imagines light poles manifesting an “on and off art”
(Flavin at this time is a great abstract painter somewhere between Motherwell
and Francis). The first step
(always on paper, documented upstairs) is a 45°
Constructivist homage to Brancusi in a single yellow (“gold”)
neon tube with its bare fixture. The transitional
works literally take off from the canvas plane with light bulbs and neon
tubes to make a concrete expression, a fused abstract image. Once embarked on,
the way seems easy, “that supreme quality of beauty, the clear radiance
of the esthetic image, is apprehended luminously by the mind which has been
arrested by its wholeness and fascinated by its harmony...” |
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