Do Not Turn Off the Bright Lights

I was at the Dan Flavin retrospective on Sunday, a few rooms into the exhibit, checking out a piece and jotting some notes, when a security guard came up to me:

GUARD: So what do you think his chances are?
ME: Hmm. . . pretty good? I mean, he's got this big retrospective. . . .

When it occurred to me that the guard was referring to the Kerry/Edwards button on my satchel. We both agreed that beyond Kerry's strong performance and Bush's bizarre falter, the fact that neither brought up Vietnam (not that they were expected to) emphasizes the real topics at stake in this election, which Bush couldn't defend. The guard really didn't think much of Flavin, however.

I'll have more thoughts on the retrospective in longer form later (I know yer sweatin'!) but I have a few, mostly technical observations:

• Horrified that Flavin's Diagonal (pictured) was hung in the premier room of the exhibit with several pieces from an earlier series ("icons"). The latter all come across as preliminary designs from when he was still working out his sea legs. Maybe one or two stand-alone works here, made less significant in the company of the Diagonal, a piece concretizing the style in which he worked for the next 30 years. One of his best pieces lumped with the historical footnotes—provokes some cognitive dissonance. I'm happy to report that the show improves from there.

• Really wanted to turn off all the lights in the gallery [other than Flavin's--ed.]. The corridor through which the show moves is pretty free of ambient light, it's all respectfully done, but still, the fluorescent light is a constitutive element of the sculpture. Felt vaguely immature about my desire to break in after hours and see the show with no gallery lights on, though at that point the fluorescent light would be the only element to his work.
  
  
• Which would be bad. Fluorescent light really fucks with your eyes. And I'd go to jail.

• Needled another guard and got at least one technical answer I was looking for. Turns out that this show is on all night: They can't turn off the lights, because it takes the fluorescent bulbs too long to "charge up." That's the guard's term, and he gave me a huge, stupid look to go with the fact—no doubt, fluorescent bulbs are as ancient as Selectric typewriters in my book. Useful information, though. . . .

No clue as to the answer to the question Lenny posted at DC Art News, which becomes more pressing to me, honestly, the longer I think about it.

Flavin, The Diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi), 1963

Posted by Kriston at October 5, 2004 1:21 AM