Dan Flavin

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist and dated June 8, 1969

Executed right at the moment when the Minimalist movement was beginning to gain credence and worldwide acknowledgement, this work can be viewed as a groundbreaker. Just as his compatriots – Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt – had pared art right down to its most concise nature and materials, this was the moment when Dan Flavin realised that his medium of choice was fluorescent light.

An early work from 1969, Untitled is an important example which aptly demonstrates the crux of the artist’s emerging practice. That same year the artist had his first travelling solo exhibition, Fluorescent Light, etc. from Dan Flavin, beginning at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, which contributed to a growing recognition of his work in New York and beyond. Denying the emotionalism of his abstract expressionist predecessors, Flavin chose to work with non-art materials, shop-bought neon light fixtures of standardised length. Through this distinctly matter-of-fact medium, Flavin forged his own distinctive visual language, one of utter clarity and simplicity which he pursued until the very end of his career.

In the present work, solid red, yellow and bright green neon, a combination the artist would return to several times, sets the wall aglow in a veritable symphony of light, leaving the spectator moved at the visual performance. Experimenting with juxtaposing neons of varying (but standardised) colours, Flavin observed that the quality of the colour could be adjusted depending on its placement and proximity to other colours. In the present work, the green burns brightest because it is a pure light whose colour is determined by the chemical nature of the phosphor that is utilised in the tube. By contrast, the yellow and red is achieved by coating the inside of the tube with pigment, because there are no chemical compounds that fluoresce those colours. Compared to the intensely bright green, the yellow and red produce a denser glow, particularly the powerful and bloodlike red. Working with a vastly restricted palette of commercially available primary colours, Flavin explored every nuance of his potential variations. Unlike paints which will eventually become black as they are mixed together, light always maintains its clarity and luminosity, qualities that held enduring appeal for Flavin.

Although projected from a three-dimensional sculptural object, Untitled is informed more by the history of painting than sculpture, continuing the exploration of colour seen in the work of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko in particular. Like Donald Judd’s ‘Specific Objects’, however, Flavin’s work stands apart from both painting and sculpture, projecting the experience of art into the architectural space in which it is exhibited. Dispensing with the pedestal and the constraints of the picture plane, the success of Flavin’s medium of choice is in the articulation of the space between the viewer and the work of art. An early exploration with colour, Untitled, 1969 is a virtuoso example of his daring artistic achievement.