The Essential New Art Examiner

The Flavin File

J oshua K ind The Flavin File June 1977 “Flavin is either a genius or nothing at all.” —B. O’Doherty (1970) “I know of no occupation in American life so meaningless and unproductive as that of art critic.” —D. Flavin (1965) “When the Gods wish to punish us, they make us believe our own advertising.” —D. Boorstin paraphrasing Oscar Wilde (1962) It may be the case that any anger at Flavin’s work becomes suspect in a fairly knowledgeable brain because of the uneasy sensation that this frustration is easily likenable to philistinism. But Alan Artner’s fine phrase aside, “Flavin has weathered the changes in the American art climate better . . . than many of his Minimalist brethren,” the work both graphic and light, has always bugged some people and the problems and the puzzlement are now clearly seen by many. It is truly astonishing just how frequently Flavin’s fluorescent light arrangements have been used by the “professional art world” to present and “test out” the tenets of an era—call it Post-Modernism if you will. In one year, for instance 1970, Flavin appeared in three New York exhibitions , in Paris, Munich, and Cologne—in one-man shows while also appearing in group exhibitions in Minneapolis, Turin, Paris, Cologne, 50   T h e E s s e n t i a l N ew A rt E xaminer and of course New York. It was not an unusual year except that there were no one-man museum exhibitions: In 1969, the Canadian Museum network hosted a large travelling exhibition; in 1972 the Albright-Knox in Buffalo, and the Rice University Institute of Arts offered exhibitions of Flavin’s work; and of course here in Chicago as early as 1967–68, Flavin was Jan van der Marck’s emblem of modernism in the second exhibition at the MCA with 8 foot pink and gold fluorescent tubes disposed about the first-floor walls there. So that one source of Flavin’s well-attested-to arrogance is his establishment position in the world of gallery and museumdom; still another is broached in Lawrence Alloway’s response to a Flavin letter (Artforum, Sept. 1974) complaining about shabby critical treatment; Alloway writes, The giveaway in his letter is his complaint that he hasn’t read “much published sympathy” from me in the past so why am I writing about him now? His choice of term for art criticism . . . shows clearly the unctuous flattery that he expects art criticism to be. He has grounds for sanguine expectation in the past record of admiring critiques in this magazine . . . typical of Flavin’s mix of humbleness and vanity is his pious loquacity concerning himself . . . it comes on as a cry for justice but turns, as you read, into an account of his international exhibition schedule . . . The exhibition held in April and May at the Art Institute of Chicago, organized earlier by the Ft. Worth Art Museum, was but a further example of the continuing omnipresence of Flavin—and also the continuing arrogance of both museum and artist. The Ft. Worth exhibition was entitled “Dan Flavin: Drawings, Diagrams, and Prints from 1972–75.” Here in Chicago, via a gift from the Society for Contemporary Art, three light sculptures were mounted in the Montgomery Ward Gallery , both as filter and climax for the rather meaningless collection of graphic work in the travelling show. Flavin’s linear control is inelegant, and he is apparently uninterested in developing it. He himself had previously explained, “My drawing is not at all inventive about itself. It is an instrument, not a resultant.” So then why, as the artist, allow that body of work, for the most part pragmatic and unaesthetic, to be displayed? One answer, discussed be- J O S H U A K I N D    The Flavin File   51 low, is that Flavin’s work is for him ostensibly his life—not that unusual an attitude anymore—and thus courts the danger of “Emperorizing his clothes,” i.e., no detachment. One wonders also at further chutzpah of museums to host this exhibition of all the travelling exhibitions abroad throughout the U.S. crying out for space. Isn’t it late in the game of “modernism” for professionals in the artworld to be cowed by reputations; by clichés—both connections and styles? Maybe not. And it is not as if no one has spoken to the issues. Although...