Texts by Corinna Thierolf and Johannes Vogt

Dan Flavin is a key figure in 20th-century art. Leaving the classical genres of painting and sculpture behind him, from the early 1960s he focused entirely on exploring and realizing the artistic potential of light. Using commercial fluorescent light fixtures, he created installations that offered new dimensions on our perception of space. This book is dedicated to his earliest experiments with artificial light: eight wall-mounted pieces created between 1961 and 1964, which he called Icons. The Icons are wooden crates painted in one colour, onto which Flavin mounted coloured lamp bulbs or fluorescent light fixtures. Corinna Thierolf and Johannes Vogt, curators at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, explore the interface the Icons that so virulently forge between the religious mysticism of light, the flickering of the brightly illuminated billboards on Broadway and the neon shrines of popular art.