Floor 4: Dan Flavin: North entrance from City Gallery
This QR code provides access to 3 artworks in this gallery.
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Objects in This Gallery
3 objects in the order you'll encounter them from this entrance. Select an object to view details.
Wall Text
1969
Cool white fluorescent light
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2008
This is one of thirty-nine arrangements of “cool white” fluorescent light fixtures that Flavin created between 1964 and 1990 and dedicated to the Russian Constructivist Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953). Their title and vertical form refer to Tatlin’s never-realized project _Monument to the Third International _(1919–20), a spiraling steel and glass structure that would have dwarfed Paris’s Eiffel Tower. Flavin pays homage to Tatlin’s quest to merge art and technology, yet ironically undermines his predecessor’s utopianism with what he called his “temporary monuments,” composed of modest, off-the-shelf lights with a limited lifespan.
Wall Text
1971
Yellow, red, and blue fluorescent light
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1990
With its title and use of red, yellow, and blue lights, this work pays tribute to the US abstract painter Barnett Newman (1905–1970), a longtime supporter of Flavin who used the same palette in a series of paintings playfully titled Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue?._ _A connection to painting is further suggested by the rectangular formation of the light fixtures, which suggests a picture canvas. Flavin’s works, however, occupy real space. The lights block off and visually dissolve the corner—a part of the room that is easily overlooked.