Thursday, February 21, 2013

"I sense no stylistic or structural development of any significance within my proposal"



Dan Flavin, the diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Robert Rosenblum)
1963 



"I know now that I can reiterate any part of my fluorescent light system as adequate. Elements of parts of that system simply alter in situation installation. They lack the look of a history. I sense no stylistic or structural development of any significance within my proposal - only shifts in partitive emphasis - modifying and addable without intrinsic change. All my diagrams, even the oldest, seem applicable again and continually. It is as though my system synonymizes its past, present and future states without incurring a loss of relevance. It is curious to feel self-denied of a progressing development."

Dan Flavin, "some remarks ... exerpts from a spleenish journal", Artforum 5, no. 4 (December 1966), p. 27.




Dan Flavin, the diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi)
1963