Background
Dan Flavin was born on April 1, 1933, in New York, United States, into the family of Catholic parents Daniel Nicolas and Viola Marion Bernzott Flavin.
He studied for the priesthood at the Immaculate Conception Preparatory Seminary in Brooklyn between 1947 and 1952.
In 1952 he graduated from Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception in Douglaston, New York.
Dan Flavin was born on April 1, 1933, in New York, United States, into the family of Catholic parents Daniel Nicolas and Viola Marion Bernzott Flavin.
Both he and his twin brother, David, went to parochial school and attended church services regularly. Serving as an acolyte, Daniel was impressed by the ceremony, the dramatic costumes of the celebrants, the music, and the lighting of high funeral mass. The brothers entered the high school of the Immaculate Conception Preparatory Seminary together in 1947, although Daniel's feelings about religion remained ambivalent. Flavin was posted in Korea, where he served as an air weather meteorological technician. During this time, he was able to take art classes offered by the University of Maryland adult extension program. Then he took art classes at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts, as well as the New School for Social Research. In 1952 he graduated from Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception in Douglaston, New York.
Flavin began drawing at a young age; his mother recalled his precocious depiction of the damage from a 1938 hurricane. A colleague of his father, Artie Schnabel, was the first to encourage his artistic leanings, showing him how to represent movement in water with little "half-moons." Flavin preferred to make drawings of real or imagined wartime scenarios, some of them inspired by the "Horrors of War" picture cards that came with packages of bubble gum at the time. Dan Flavin and his brother joined the U.S. Air Force in 1953. While visiting Japan, he purchased a Rodin drawing, the first acquisition of an eclectic art collection to which he added throughout his lifetime.
Flavin returned to New York in 1956, when he was reassigned to Roslyn Air Force Base. Exploring his interest in art, he frequented the New York galleries. The following year, he matriculated at Columbia University with the intention of becoming an art historian to support his work as an artist. Abandoning this route after three semesters, he took various odd jobs, including working in the mailroom of the Guggenheim and as a guard at The Museum of Modern Art.
Many of his early drawings and paintings explored tonal qualities and reflected an interest in Abstract Expressionism. Experimentation with found objects led to a series of mixed media assemblages, some using empty aluminum cans, such as “Apollinaire Wounded” from 1959 - 1960. The beginnings of Flavin's light works can be seen in its reflective metal surfaces, possibly inspired by the coffee cans, light bulbs, and flashlights that Jasper Johns incorporated into his own pieces. “Apollinaire Wounded” is also one of the first pieces dedicated to an admired artist or friend, typically one who died in unfortunate circumstances.
Consisting of blank canvases highlighted by electric or fluorescent bulbs, Flavin's works are reminiscent of the religious icons found in Catholic churches, often surrounded by electric vigil lights. The paintings show no trace of the artist's touch, focusing on the objecthood of each piece. “Icon IV (The Pure Land) (to David John Flavin)” (1962 - 1969) conjures the spirituality and infinite space of a Malevich, but its nondescript construction could also be taken for a light fixture. “The Icons” were first exhibited in Flavin's 1964 solo exhibition at Kaymar Gallery. The show was generally well-received, particularly by Donald Judd, whose own Minimalist works also rejected painterly qualities in favor of objecthood.
By 1963, Flavin had eliminated the canvas, using only fluorescent bulbs. The switch from incandescent to fluorescent lights signified his alignment with contemporary art movements, which often featured new industrial technologies. The use of fluorescents also highlighted a mass-produced, commonplace material, recalling the ideals of Russian Constructivism. In fact, Flavin dedicated a total of 39 "monuments" to Vladimir Tatlin between 1964 and 1990. Simply made from the light bulb, an everyday item with a short "lifespan", these pieces were the antithesis of their given title.
In 1969, Flavin's first retrospective opened at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. The comprehensive exhibition showcased eight installations, each filling an entire gallery space. Flavin referred to these pieces as "situations", signifying his intention to create an all-encompassing experience. One of the more complex pieces created for the retrospective, “Untitled (to S. M. with all the admiration and love which I can sense and summon)” (1969), lined a 64-foot-long hallway with long bulbs of pink, blue, red, and yellow. The use of different colors demonstrated Flavin's interest in optical effects and creating mood with lighting design.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Flavin continued to develop more complex iterations of the "barriers" and "corridors." He concentrated on large-scale installations, growing more concerned with site-specificity as he was offered access to larger exhibition spaces. Many of these ambitious projects were ultimately abandoned, including a lighting plan for the Munich Olympics, a permanent installation space at Dick's Castle in Garrison, New York, a design for pedestrian tunnels in Amsterdam, and a lobby installation at the World Trade Center.
Flavin began to suffer from complications due to diabetes during the 1980s. Despite his health problems, Flavin designed an extensive light installation for the opening of the new Guggenheim building in 1992, which was carefully planned to complement the architecture. Other major projects include the installations at the Chiesa di Santa Maria Annunziata in Milan, and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, both ultimately completed by his studio after Flavin's death in 1996.
Juan Gris in Paris (adieu Picabia)
Diagonal of Personal Ecstasy (the Diagonal of May 25, 1963, to Constantin Brancusi)
Untitled (to Jan and Ron Greenberg)
The nominal three (to William of Ockham)
Untitled (to Henri Matisse)
Untitled (to the innovator of Wheeling Peachblow)
Untitled (to Barnett Newman to commemorate his simple problem, red, yellow and blue)
”Monument” 4 for those who have been killed in ambush (to P.K. who reminded me about death)
”Monument” 1 for V. Tatlin
Untitled
Untitled (to Bob and Pat Rohm)
Untitled (to my dear bitch, Airily)
Untitled (to you, Heiner, with admiration and affection)
Untitled (in honor of Harold Joachim) 3
Untitled (for Robert with fond regards)
Untitled
Alternating pink and "gold"
Pink out of corner (to Jasper Johns)
A primary picture
Untitled (to Barry Mike Chuck and Leonard)
Icon V (Coran's Broadway Flesh)
Greens crossing greens (to Piet Mondrian who lacked green)
Untitled (to Tracy, to celebrate the love of a lifetime)
He was never ordained, but he clearly maintained some interest in the spiritual, as his signature explorations of light (a phenomenon in art historically associated with the divine or the numinous) reveal.
Classified within the Minimalist framework, Flavin saw himself as vehemently "Maximalist." That is, in using readymade objects in the style of Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, he exploited the possibilities of the most banal and in some ways ugly material: harsh fluorescent lights - surely the stuff of futuristic anti-aestheticism.
The tendency to privilege pre-fabricated industrial materials and simple, geometric forms together with the emphasis placed on the physical space occupied by the artwork and the viewer's interaction with it aligns Flavin's work with that of other Minimalist artists. His emphasis on light and its effects, however, align him as strongly with Op art, whose practitioners explored variations in color and shape based on differences in light.
While working at MoMA, Flavin met Sonja Severdija. They married in 1961, and worked together on the construction of the Icon pieces. Flavin married his second wife, the artist Tracy Harris, in a ceremony at the Guggenheim Museum, in 1992.