Author: greg

img: Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights, 1961-1996
Stephen Flavin is the only child of Dan Flavin and his first wife, Sonja Severdija. Trained as a filmmaker, Stephen, who lived apart from his father since his parents divorce, began assisting his father’s company, Dan Flavin, Ltd, in 1992. His first efforts–producing the artist’s all-important certificates by computer (previously, they had been variously handwritten or typed) and converting the elaborate and disparate index-card-based inventory of works, which was split among several galleries, to an electronic database–have helped in efforts since his father’s death in 1996 to create a catalogue raisonne of the artist’s work.
Stephen Flavin has overseen the activities of his father’s estate since 1997. He is private and is generally satisfied to have others–such as Steve Morse, the estate’s studio director, or Dia experts such as Michael Govan or Tiffany Bell–speak publicly about Dan Flavin’s work. While my several attempts to contact Stephen before the article’s deadline were unsuccessful, he did call me shortly thereafter and graciously agreed to discuss his experience with the estate, his father’s work, and Dia:

Continue reading “Re-inventing the Lightbulb, 2/2: Stephen Flavin”

Although they happened too late to make the article, I had some enlightening conversations with Emily Rauh Pulitzer, a collector and curator of Flavin’s work, and with the artist’s son, Stephen Flavin, who manages his father’s estate. They’re worth sharing here for the additional light they shed [sic] on Flavin’s legacy and the complexities and contradictions inherent in his deceptively simple work. I’ll post them separately, first Pulitzer.

Continue reading “Re-inventing the Light Bulb, 1/2: Emily Rauh Pulitzer”

Richard Polsky does a round-up of the 2004 art market on Artnet and makes some predictions for 2005, and guess what? Of the dozens of artists he looks at, only four–Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Felix Gonzalez-Torres (??) and Ross Bleckner–are anticipated to go down next year. Most are going up, or are predicted to be “status quo,” which I take to mean either “they’ll go up, but I don’t know why” or “they’ll go down, but I don’t want to piss off my dealer/artist/collector friends by saying so.”
Murakami and Nara are cheap/easy shots: their auction prices have been wild for a while. Bleckner’s market has been sort of sleepy for a while, so no one’s shocked by that. And Felix, he’s just wrong on that one: the work that came up this year was either atypical, or sold very well. Soon enough, people looking for good Felix’s will find there aren’t that many left. I think Polsky’s just being pissy.
In any case, his analysis reminds me of the i-banks’ stock recommendations during the bubble: all buys, no sells, with all arrows pointing up. And we know how that turned out.

Art Market Guide 2004 [artnet]

James Meyer: You turned eighty last year. Has age, in some way, affected your work?
Anne Truitt: I don’t think age makes any difference except that it endows a person with freedom. Age cuts you off, untethers you. It’s a great feeling. The other thing is, when you get to be eighty, you’re looking back and down, out from a peak. I can look down and see my life from my own little hill; I see this plain, all the years of experience.
JM: Does that mean making the work is somehow easier?
AT: No, it’s harder. It costs me much more; I have all those years that I have to face and it takes a certain amount of courage. It’s not a light and foolish thing. Color is getting more complex and harder and harder to mix. There are more complexities in it because my own experience is much more complex.
JM: Is it physically more difficult to work?
AT: It’s not more difficult to be faithful, but I have to be faithful to more and more. And I have less psychic energy as I get older. Heaven knows I have less physical energy!
JM: But it has not changed the fundamental process or ambition of the work. If anything, the ambition has increased.
AT: Yes, I would say, by leaps and bounds.

-excerpt from “Grand Allusion,” James Meyer’s interview with Anne Truitt, published in the May 2002 issue of Artforum.

It took us a few months to realize it, but one summer evening, the street we were walking along grew increasingly familiar. We’d driven on this street, I told my wife, this is where we parked to go meet Anne Truitt. Sure enough, around the corner was the house she’d invited us to over a year and a half earlier, after I’d asked a curator and mutual friend had introduce us.

We had a wonderful time; she was very gracious, very engaged, talked at length about NASA and science with my wife; she’d just emptied her studio for a show, so there wasn’t much to see, but we’d see it when we came again, she promised.

Once we realized we’d moved into Anne Truitt’s neighborhood, we decided we should invite her over. The heat of the Washington summer made me doubt whether she would see a visit to our seemingly under-air-conditioned apartment as a fair return for her hospitality, so I waited until September to write her. We’d had a baby, &c., moved into the District, &c., realized you were nearby, &c.

Within a week, she wrote back, and I spent October planning the best occasion to have her over. We’d have her for tea [note to self: buy tea], or maybe even dinner [note to self: finally light stove]. We’d invite some younger artists, friends who had been inspired by her work and success in an art world that was still–in the minimalist 60’s and 70’s, especially–a hard-edged boy’s club. We’d invite some collector friends, who’d in turn thank us for introducing them to such an important artist. But mostly, we’d probably talk about our daughter–it’s all we ever do these days, anyway–who Mrs. Truitt had congratulated us on, and who she said she was eager to meet. And we’d trade stories about kids–and grandkids–and just enjoy her company.

Then in November, I saw one of her early, pioneering minimalist sculptures in the newly reinstalled MoMA. How’s that feel, I’d ask her. Have you seen the installation yet? No? Don’t worry, the pink Flavin in the far corner doesn’t reach your piece. Ryman’s, on the other hand… We’d share an insiders’ laugh, quietly acknowledging that the recent appreciation of Truitt’s work was the flipside of many years where her contributions and accomplishments were written off or unknown by many in the art world. History was written by the victors, they’d say, and she was Clement Greenberg’s girl… No doubt Truitt would bristle at the condescension behind the word, then she’d get back to work.

Last week I went to Baltimore for an upcoming screening, and I stopped at the Baltimore Museum of Art, which has some of the best holdings of Truitt’s work. Kind of a screwy museum, but it was nearly empty on a Wednesday morning, so I had the two Truitts and the neighboring (Ellsworth) Kellys and the McCracken to myself. I’d tell her about the visit, how her works seemed so evocative, minimalist in form, but imbued with some human aspect, made by a person, an idea that artists like Judd tried to omit from their work. And how still, I had to admit, the Judd plywood box nearby had a marvelous grain.

In the bookstore, I looked in vain for a nice edition of Truitt’s published diaries–the entry point into her work for many students and artists who came of age when Truitt’s work was in the critical backseat–that I would ask her to sign for me. With Christmas coming, it might not be proper to intrude on family time, I thought, but wouldn’t it also be a good season to let her know we were thinking of her?

Now I learn she’s gone, and I look back on all the chances I missed to speak with, and listen to an artist I admired very much, and it makes me quite sad.

Previously: Anne Truitt on greg.org
Related: Modern Art Notes links. [don’t work -ed.]