Author Description

This book examines a seminal early exhibition of work by Dan Flavin that took place in 1964 at New Yorks influential (though short-lived) Green Gallery. This exhibition was groundbreaking not only in terms of its presentation of radically innovative work that used commercially-available, colored fluorescent light, but also because it marked a turning-point in Flavins career. The Green Gallery show was the first exhibition in which the artist presented only fluorescent light pieces, and it included such important works as the diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Robert Rosenblum), 1963; a primary picture, 1964; and the nominal three (to William of Ockham), 1963. It marked the development of the minimalist language of illumination that would characterize Flavins influential work until his death in 1996, and is therefore considered by many to be one of the key gallery exhibitions of the 1960s. Dan Flavin: The 1964 Green Gallery exhibition includes new scholarship on this important body of work by Jeffrey Weiss, Director of the Dia Art Foundation, New York. The publication documents the original show with rare archival photographs and reproductions of the early critical reviews and responses to Flavins fluorescent light works and includes a selection of recently commissioned statements by artists and critics who saw the exhibition in 1964. The book also contains new color plates that document each of the works from the exhibition, in addition to a selection of drawings which show the development of Flavins ideas about these works and their original installation.