Michael Workman

Watching the Fourth of July fireworks this past weekend brought to mind the very different kinds of lights now hanging at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Dan Flavin has been dead since 1996 when he left us at the age of 63, and it's just now that a retrospective of his work is making the rounds. Curated by Michael Govan, president and director of the Dia Art Foundation--where the show originated--and Tiffany Bell, organizer of a definitive Flavin catalog, the wait only increased expectations, especially given the current rage for Minimalist reevaluation ignited by the "A Minimal Future? Art As Object 1958-1968" exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

What's significant about Flavin's art is how, in the visual imagination, he was able to perceive light as a material, the same as we do paint or marble. Merely confront the yellow and green haze of his "untitled (to Jan and Ron Greenberg)" from 1972-3 in its constructed hallways, frames which narrow and intensify the emitted light so it's like standing in the beam of a giant klieg lamp, and that materiality snaps into sharp relief. Although it's not a wholly new concept--photography codified this way of thinking long ago--Flavin's use of colored fluorescent tubes went even further to transform how we think of sculpture and architecture. We were suddenly able to inhabit the space of these artistic forms by stepping into the aura of what amounted to so much industrial-lighting hardware. It has been argued that his choice of these common objects was a reaction to the at-times overwrought mysticism of the Abstract Expressionists, and that seems right. Minimalism more generally reads now as an attempt to draw back the reigns of what was once an ever-expanding universe of the Ab-Ex unconscious. Flavin's contribution to that effort was remarkable enough to earn him a place among such Minimalist pioneers as Carl Andre and Donald Judd, but this retrospective also brightly reveals the artist's inability to reach beyond his one big idea. It's a testament to the power of that idea, however, that it has sustained his work across more than three decades, through to the present moment, and doubtless the unwritten future of art history.

So what does this retrospective do to further illuminate Flavin's contribution? Well, much has been made of the fact that the MCA gave the artist his first solo museum show in 1967 (as distinct from his first solo show, which was in 1961 at New York's Judson Gallery). In that exhibition, Flavin exhibited "alternating pink and `gold,'" which has been re-created here. Before seeing this, however, visitors are likely to encounter "Circle of Influence," an auxiliary exhibit on the third floor that starts off the retrospective with a little paean to the value of a contemporary art museum itself. Much of this consists of correspondence between Flavin and the MCA's first director, Jan van der Marck, alongside a selection of works by the artist's contemporaries, such as Ad Reinhart.

Mounting the stairs, you are then guided up by the glow from above. A few steps later, you'll encounter, hopefully as uncrowded as it was on a recent Saturday afternoon, his green "untitled (to you, Heiner, with admiration and affection)" from 1973, a fence-like row of gridded lights that run the length of the upper atrium. In a side room are a number of his "icon pieces," which demonstrate the artist's attempt to integrate his tubes into wall hangings, experimenting, for instance, with oil on cold gesso on masonite and pine. From one piece to another, you see a progressive move toward the use of just those colored tubes until finally we're left with his first light-only work, the single yellow fluorescent of "the diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi)." It progresses pretty much chronologically from there, each piece a demonstration of his selective variation in the arrangement of tubes, from "the nominal three (to William of Ockham)" of 1963 to his 1989 "untitled." They're all gorgeous. Each is a step in his art until, finally, he has mapped the furthest outer perimeters of something that was utterly and entirely new.

Buddy less
News that Buddy Gallery will close, a perhaps less sublime but no less fun space at 1524 North Milwaukee Avenue in Wicker Park, comes as sort of a buzzkill. As an art space, its contribution was perhaps less than historically significant: over the years, the folks responsible for Lumpen magazine and the annual Version Fest nuttiness used their second-floor loft to host countless excuses for alcohol abuse under the pretense of art shows. As their website (www.lumpen.com/buddy/yes.html) has it, the loft was meant as a "habitat and cultural space for emerging accidents, radical culture and intentional community organising." And true to their word, accidents were plenty in evidence, as was some pretty "radical" culture.

It's truly sad to see them go, and given how active the space has been of late, it seems a little untimely. How exactly did this happen? As de facto guy-in-charge Ed Marszewski put it on a recent visit, "the landlord just got tired of the graffiti." A fare-thee-well blowout is in the works, but the general public will have to salve its wounds in solitude: plans are to make the sendoff admission by invite only.

Mea culpa
Two weeks ago this column incorrectly spelled the name of Brittany Reilly, co-director of the Booster and Seven space in the Wicker Park neighborhood.

(2005-07-05)

Also by Michael Workman

Eye Exam
"Drawn Out," a new exhibition at the University of Illinois Gallery 400, examines the capability of drawing to move between artistic mediums
(2005-06-28)

Eye Exam
Wicker Park has long been at the center of a struggle between commerce and hipster culture
(2005-06-24)

Eye Exam
Chicano art has come a long way since the César Chávez-influenced days
(2005-06-15)

Tip of the Week
Visitors to Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois will notice a new addition to the outside plaza: a flagpole
(2005-06-09)

Eye Exam
(2005-06-09)

Eye Exam
(2005-05-24)

Tip of the Week
(2005-05-24)

Eye Exam
(2005-05-10)

Eye Exam
(2005-04-26)

Eye Exam
(2005-04-19)

Eye Exam
(2005-04-12)

Tip of the Week
(2005-04-12)

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