For years, I was convinced I’d discovered an undisclosed Dan Flavin installation at the southernmost intersection of Brooklyn and Queens. I lived in Coney Island, firmly entrenched in what I would later deem my “psychedelic renaissance.” I was paranoid, in constant awe and low-grade inspiration. More often than I’d like to admit, after getting a mild manic high on, I’d race down the steps of my two-room apartment between Surf Ave and the boardwalk, crank the engine of my 2000 Buick Park Avenue, and cruise aimlessly along the desolate streets.
One afternoon, parked outside Plum Beach, I called the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Does anyone know,” I interrogated the docent to whom I was transferred. My speech trailed off. I was looking at the slack, fragrant water, the glimmering trash and oiled iridescence separating the boroughs. I looked to the sky. “Can anyone tell me,” I continued. “Does anyone have any earthly idea if those three fluorescent lamps affixed to a particular overpass, observable from the eastbound tract of the Belt Parkway, are, in fact, a Dan Flavin?” The line went dead.
As an adolescent, Flavin had trained to join the Catholic priesthood. When he was nineteen, he and his twin brother David enlisted in the Air Force, by which they were deployed to Korea. There, through the University of Maryland Extension Program, he began to study art. In 1961, he relinquished painting and abstract expressionism in favor of canvas and light collages he referred to as “icons.” In 1962, David died. And in 1963, Dan embraced the fluorescent tube solely, completely.
Three more decades of iterations on this material theme ensued. “I see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Raymond Pettibon tweeted in 2024 amid a barrage of Middle East war footage, “and it’s for sale. Inquire: Dan Flavin estate. David Zwirner Gallery.”
-David Fishkind