Michael Govan and Tiffany Bell (Dia Art Foundation and Yale University Press, 2004)
Michael Govan: Irony and Light
Using industrial materials, picked up Tatlin's cry of 'real materials in real space'.
The tubes present sculptural possibilities and painterly (mixing colours together moves them towards white - with paints they go to black).
Rejected any mystical interpretation of his work, denied he had any inner vision and defended his work against academic interpretation. Just fixtures and tubes that create an optical experience. He said: Symbolising is dwindling - becoming slight. We are pressing downward towards no art - a mutual sense of psychologically indifferent decoration - a neutral pleasure of seeing known to everyone. In fact he didn't even create 'works' but rather 'proposals' for a particular situation.
Critics however cannot resist e.g. quotes Elizabeth C Baker saying that pure light has qualities of being 'seductive and confusing'; as overwhelming both the viewer and surrounding space; as having a 'symbolic capacity to arouse an emotional response; as retaining echoes of sun, fire, warmth, mystery, life.
Brydon E Smith: Reflections and Thoughts about Dan Flavin
Quotes DF on his first tube piece:
The Diagonal of May 25th, 1963
'There was no need to compose this lamp in place; it implanted itself directly, dynamically, dramatically in my workroom wall - a buoyant and relentless gaseous image which, through brilliance, betrayed its physical presence into approximate invisibility.'
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