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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. But in spite of the potential richness, it is the central purity of the idea which is so entrancing, and which ensures its inclusion within the pale of minimalism.
Walking into the Hayward Gallery to see Dan Flavin: A Retrospective (until 2 April), the visitor is hit by a wall of light. A long, fence-like installation of gridded units blares whitely at you, yet the surrounding light is green. The structure makes a nice visual rhyme with the ramp which gives access to the higher gallery, but it traverses the width of the lower space with a relentlessness which subverts its initial magic. Turn to the right into the first room of the exhibition, rather too busy with seven of Flavin’s earliest pieces, small works which use ordinary lightbulbs before he struck upon the usefulness of the tube. The first fluorescent piece, the golden diagonal, is here, glowing imperturbably. Move into the next room, and Flavin’s inventiveness begins to make itself felt. This is a spangly sort of room, confining its effects well to the edges and corners, offering an empty frame called ‘a primary picture’ (1964), but also stalking across the floor in yellow, pink and red. A white chamber next, ‘the nominal 3’, before the spectator can move through into the largest open space downstairs, beautifully articulated by a series of sculptures conceived as a monument to the Russian constructivist Vladimir Tatlin. This is a stunning installation of mostly cool white tubes (one sculpture is in daylight white with a single red accent) arranged in vertical, horizontal and diagonal groupings which appear more architectural than anything else.
This room, which forms the flaming white heart of the exhibition, isn’t any old neon display that might grace the fa
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