Dan Flavin

Dan Flavin – First weather lights, then light magic

Dan Flavin was born in New York on 1 April 1933. His roots were initially more of a spiritual nature than artistic, and from 1947 to 1952 he attended the Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception, then the Priest Seminar in New York. His father, an Irish officer and deeply religious, had intended a career as priest for his son. Perhaps this is why Flavin created his subsequent cathedrals of light. He first took a different path, however, and trained as a meteorologist from 1953. He worked in this job for the Royal Air Force in Korea before finally setting the course for a career as an artist and starting studies in art history at the New York School for Social Research. After attending further courses at the Hans Hoffmann School of Fine Arts, Flavin worked for a short time in several museums whilst working on his first installations. While he had focused mainly on traditional artworks such as oil paintings in the 1950s, he became now increasingly interested in assemblages and constructions, and in 1961, Dan Flavin finally began to incorporate electric fluorescent tubes into his art – his great breakthrough came two years later with his light installation Diagonal of May 25.

Break with traditions; sacred heritage

Traditional materials were not for Dan Flavin; he wished to deliberately break new ground and draw the viewer into his light installations. Nevertheless, he resisted an overtly profound interpretation of his creativity, putting him squarely in line with the Minimalists, among whose important representatives he is counted – although he himself was anything but happy with this classification. Nearly all of his installations are imbued with a peculiar spirituality that, despite all the artist’s protests to the contrary, often produced the sacred aura of a church or cathedral. This impression was enhanced by the increasing size of his installations which steadily grew in scale in the 1960s, expanding from simple objects to whole corridors, halls and buildings and attracting widespread resonance. For his light installations, Dan Flavin mostly used a sophisticated combination of cold and warm colours; the artist arranged the various luminescent materials so skillfully that at times the illusion of entire labyrinths with shifting walls and lighting conditions were created. Depending on the position of the viewer, the shape of the artwork changes – a secret of Dan Flavin’s great success with critics and the public. 

Long-term illness; significant legacy

Dan Flavin was married twice. He had a son, Stephen, with his first wife Sonjy Severdija, whilst the second marriage to the artist Tracy Harris did not bear children. Dan Flavin died on 29 November 1996 in New York from a long-term diabetes illness. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of his death, the Munich Pinakothek honoured the great light magician with a comprehensive exhibition where around 70 works could be admired, including the important ‘monuments for Vladimir Tatlin’.