Let There Be Coloured Light - Dan Flavin

It was more than a coincidence that a nation that gave us Donald Judd could also produce the artist Dan Flavin.  In fact, the two met in 1962 at a gathering in a Brooklyn apartment organised to discuss the possibility of a cooperative artist-run gallery.  Their friendship developed and the two became known as “Flavin and Judd” for a while, indeed Judd named his son Flavin Starbuck Judd.

Untitled 1970

Many of Flavin’s installations were site-specific, such as the one above.  In the December 1965 issue of Artforum, Flavin wrote “I knew that the actual space of a room could be broken down and played with by planting illusions of real light (electric light) at crucial junctions in the room’s composition.”

In the final episode of his 1996 series “American Visions”, critic Robert Hughes referred to the age of anxiety in modern America, fed by the cold war and the general disillusionment with government following the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War.  He visited the Judd ‘shrine’ in Marfa, Texas to illustrate his point, but he could equally have visited a Flavin installation for while the play of coloured light could be construed as beautiful, there is an anxiousness with his vast empty scenes.

Untitled (for Ksenija) 1994

Flavin was born in New York in 1933.  He became a Catholic altar boy and trained to be a priest.  He recalled being ''curiously fond of the solemn high funeral Mass, which was so consummately rich in candlelight, music, chant, vestments, processions and incense.''  This, no doubt, became a major influence on his work as an artist.  He is described as a minimalist sculptor and is considered to be the first artist to employ electric light in a sustained way.

Installation at Menil’s Richmond Hall 1996

An article in the New York Times describes Flavin’s art as “brazenly radical and very much in the vein of Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades”, but apart from the use of manufactured materials, I don’t see any correlation at all.  But then the article goes on to describe Flavin’s installations as having an “ecstatic beauty that was at once painterly and architectural”.

Flavin became adept at combining the intense lines of colour of the light tube with their softer diffuse glow and the geometric arrangements of the tubes.  In 1971, he illuminated the entire rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum, but he was just as successful illuminating a corner as below.

It was very daring of Flavin to move sculpture away from the figurative to the impersonal use of industrial materials.  In 1989, he extended his range by illuminating the exterior of the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Baden Baden, Germany.  Works such as these have been described as symphonic.  I often wonder if he had an influence on artists such as Olafur Eliasson and Kimsooja who I covered in earlier blogs.

Flavin arrived at the idea of using fluorescent tubes after several years of painting and drawing in the abstract expressionistic manner.  These were followed by a brief period in the late 1950's and early 60's of making boxy wall reliefs in strong monochromatic colours, to which he attached coloured light bulbs and fluorescent tubes.

According to the PBS program The Art Assignment, minimalist sculptors decided to abandon the pedestal to dismantle the separation between the viewer and the art.  Judd argued these works were neither painting nor sculpture but specific objects occupying space that didn’t necessarily reference anything.   And it’s worth noting that the artists themselves hated the term minimalism.

Work such as Flavin’s contains no secret, no hidden meaning, there is nothing to interpret.  It is what it is, and thus it was a complete break with the past where meaning may lie somewhere inside the object waiting to be unlocked.  Instead, the meaning lies in the viewer’s interaction with it, the context and the strong feelings it can evoke for presence, absence, space and light.  It is argued in the PBS program that in a world filled with complexity and information and “lots and lots of stuff”, minimalist art can be a balm.  I’m not about to argue.

Flavin died in 1996 from complications arising from diabetes.  

It’s now hibernation time for me, I’ll be back around mid January.

References;

The New York Times

PBS: The Art Assignment

Art Forum

Henry Darger - Outsider Artist

The term outsider artist seems to be applied to those who are self-taught or naïve art makers. Typically, they tend to have little or no contact with the mainstream art world and in many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths.  The term is also applied to artists with intellectual disabilities or mental illnesses as well as those on the margins of art and society: the homeless, ethnic minorities, migrants and folk artists.

An article in The Guardian in 2014 described outsider art as “hot”, art fairs are now dedicated to it and they draw big crowds and big money.  It’s interesting how the term outsider artist tends to be applied by gallerists, academics, psychologists and art school trained artists – that is, by those on the inside.

But what of the artists themselves?  One of the best known outsider artists is Henry Darger (1892-1973) who lived almost his entire life in Chicago.  In her book “The Lonely City”, author Olivia Laing describes how easy it is for people to vanish in cities, retreating into their apartments due to illness (mental and/or physical), bereavement or simply being unable to impress themselves into society.  Darger was just such a person.

He was born in the slums of Chicago and when he was 4, his mother died of a fever shortly after giving birth to his sister who was immediately adopted.  His father became a cripple and when Henry was 8, he was sent initially to a Catholic boys home and then to the Illinois Asylum for the Feeble Minded.  He was considered a bright student at school but strange behavioural traits resulted in his incarceration.  He was aware of the injustice of all this, “I, a feeble minded kid.  I knew more than the whole shebang in that place”, he wrote in his journal.

Whilst there, Darger received the devastating news that his father had died.  He was subject to dreadful treatment at the asylum, images of which later appeared in his art.  He made several escape attempts, the first resulted in being caught by a cowboy who lassoed him and forced him to run behind a horse back to the asylum.  Instances of child abuse at the asylum are well documented.

Eventually, Darger made it back to Chicago for good and found work as a janitor in a Catholic hospital where he would spend the next 54 years, working long and arduous hours. The only break was when he spent a year serving in World War One. He lived alone in a tiny apartment and filled it with illustrations, paintings and writings.

Darger’s apartment

At around 1911, he began work on a novel called “The Realm Of The Unreal”, that would eventually run to over 15,000 pages.  After the war Darger began to illustrate the novel with watercolours.  No one knew of the existence of this novel until after his death and it is claimed that when he was on his deathbed, he asked his landlord to destroy it.  But the landlord, Nathan Lerner, saw the value in Darger’s work and saved it.  Some of it is now on permanent display at INTUIT: The Centre for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago.

His novel, which is perhaps in the vein of Tolkien or the Game of Thrones, is about the Vivian girls; that is seven girls who are his heroines who lead an army to free a group of child slaves who are being held captive by an evil army.  So it is a classic good versus evil story.  It is likely the genesis of this novel was his experiences at the asylum and his war service plus his appalling loneliness.  But Darger has left no information about why he produced this vast quantity of work.  It is believed he saw no value in it.

Thus it could be argued that it’s the intrigue surrounding Darger’s work that has contributed to the aura around it.  If he had been actively pushing these works during his lifetime it is possible they would not have the popularity they enjoy today, where prices in the $100,000s are not uncommon.  There is a bitter irony to this story of course, as it would appear he produced this art just for himself, perhaps in order to make his life more bearable.

With so little to go on, Darger’s life and art have been the subject of extensive analysis which have included suggestions of paedophilia.  Yet from his journals, we know child protection was a major concern of his.  We also know that he was a devout Catholic who regularly attended mass, that he had one good friend called William Schloeder who he possibly met during the war and called on regularly until Schloeder’s mother died in 1956.  Schloeder then moved to San Antonio to live with his sister and died 3 years later.  This left Darger entirely friendless.

We also know he taught himself to draw by collecting and tracing thousands of images and he also used collage and free hand drawing. 

Laing suggests it would be foolish to suggest Darger was not undamaged by his past, not the subject of some kind of breach with the external world. But she quotes a declaration of child independence he made in the “Realms” which include, “the right to play, to be happy and to dream, the right to normal sleep during the night’s season, the right to an education, that we may have an equality of opportunity for developing all that are in us of mind and heart”.

References;

The Guardian

Olivia Laing - The Lonely City

The Good Stuff - The Secret Life & Art of Henry Darger

Art After Dark

Night time has been described as the time when reality disappears and imaginings begin.  People somehow seem less sane at night, according to Mark Twain.  Shakespeare described night as the witching time and the night seems to have been a particularly productive time for many artists, particularly those interested in images of drama, mystery and perhaps even madness.

Georges Del La Tour, Magdalen With A Smoking Flame, circa 1640

“If you are trying to image things rather than look at them, to see them with your mind’s eye, then darkness comes into its own, and the night becomes your ally.  The dark brought drama to our divine imaginings and made them feel real.” WALDEMAR jANUSZCZAK

Ippolito Caffi, Serenade In St Marks Place

Italian artist Ippolito Caffi (1809-1866) seems to have had a particularly intense relationship with the night. His daytime scenes of Venice are superb but it’s his night time scenes that are relevant here, and he is a difficult artist to find any substantial information on.

Ippolito Caffi, Marketplace in Venice by Moonlight

At an exhibition of his work, held at the Museo Correr in Venice in 2016, (what I would have given to see it) the catalogue describes Caffi as a restless observer of society and a convinced patriot.  “Venice was the city that Caffi loved most, whose freedom he fought for and whose spectacular beauty he translated into painting, employing a capacity for synthesis unequaled during the entire nineteenth century.”

Ippolito Caffi, The Pantheon By Moonlight

His patriotism drove him to become the first painter to record an Italian naval engagement, but his efforts came to nothing.  The Re d' Italia, on which he traveled was destroyed on July 20, 1866, by the Austro-Venetian fleet at the Battle of Lissa, drowning him along with his comrades.

Ippolito Caffi, Solar Eclipse Over Venice 1842

Caffi was also a fine chronicler of unusual events. Here is his depiction of a solar eclipse. One wonders how many of these people lost their sight whilst witnessing this event.

Johann Christian Claussen Dahl, Dresden In The Moonlight, 1839

There’s a gorgeous serenity in Johann Christian Dahl’s moonlit scenes of Dresden.  They take me to another level of consciousness, whereas I suspect a daytime view would not have the same effect.  The candle lit rooms across the river and the flares on the river bank contrast beautifully with the cold light of the moon.

Edward Hopper, The Nighthawks, 1943

Film directors love the paintings of American artist Edward Hopper. There are so many questions being posed here. What is the relationship between the couple on the right? What about the menacing figure of the guy with the powerful shoulders who has his back to us? No one has been able to precisely locate where this scene is, perhaps a deliberate ploy by Hopper to increase the mystery of the scene.

Moonlight Near Roxby Downs, 2014, Oil On Canvas, 101 cm x 142 cm

Roxby Downs is located in outback South Australia and this painting was inspired by a photo I saw of a lightning strike in the area, and I was particularly interested in the sheen on the water created by the lightning fork.  So I decided to turn the scene into a moonlit night time image, partly because of the challenge it presented and partly to highlight the isolation of the scene. And yet, the cold moonlight perhaps gives the scene a softness and harmony that may not be present during the daytime when you could image the appalling heat during the summer months.

Richard Estes & Canaletto - Birds Of A Feather?

"Unfortunately it has been too easy for anybody to take a photograph, trace it, and make a lousy painting. Photorealism, in that sense, has been bastardized. I can sympathize with a lot of people who just reject it outright, because, like anything else, there is so much bad stuff around. I always thought of myself as a Realist painter."  RICHARD ESTES

That may be the case, but it's what Estes does with reality that fascinates me, and puts me in mind of the famous Venician artist of the Eighteenth Century, Canaletto.

On The Staten Island Ferry  (1989)               Richard Estes                         Oil On Canvas

Estes, along with other photorealist artists, decided to turn their backs on the gestural style of the abstract expressionist movement which was so prominent in late 60's America, and aim for a kind of hyper realism which was more descriptive of a high tech post war age.

Piazza San Marco With The Basilica    (1730)    Canaletto                  Oil On Canvas

Early on in his career, Canaletto abandoned the dark and brooding tonality of his work and produced paintings of a much higher pitch, mainly because he found a new market for his work in Venice - the English tourist.  Canaletto was famous for his use of the camera obscura which he used to produce multiple images of a scene from different vantage points.  Then he jumbled them up to come up with a scene that, in reality, didn't exist.  It was the eighteenth century's prelude to the photo montage and thus he created scenes that were far more idyllic than in reality.

Madison Square  (1994)                     Richard Estes                    Oil On Canvas

When viewers have tried to match Estes' paintings with actual scenes around New York and elsewhere, they have found inconsistencies.  He works from multiple photos of a scene, even bisecting them, shifting elements around,  to come up with a composition that plays with perspective which can be a little disorienting.  "By creating his photorealistic montages that seem convincingly whole, Estes produces works in which there are multiple focal points. He confounds the concept of the mathematical or one-point perspective, the Renaissance invention that provided drawn and painted images with the illusion of depth. Instead, viewing a typical Estes painting feels like one is constantly changing vantage points".  THE ART STORY

London, Whitehall & the Privy Garden   (1747)             Canaletto           Oil On Canvas

When the English tourist market dried up, Canaletto decided to travel to England and produced some remarkable scenes such as the one above which was painted from Richmond House (no longer extant).

Estes paintings reinvigorated the importance of craft in painting and even though his work is hyper-realistic, they are still in some way "painterly".  His work goes beyond photography.