It seems like the “re-creation” of Dan Flavin’s 1964 Green Gallery show now at Zwirner & Wirth is on the mind of half the critics in New York. In the weeks since the Village Voice reviewed the exhibition, it has been written up in the New York Times and New York Magazine.

The Zwirner & Wirth show was also a major topic at the Pulitzer’s recent Flavin symposium for graduate students and their professors. Most of the participants felt, like Jerry Saltz, that Z&W should be thanked for allowing Flavin enthusiasts a chance to step back in time. I agreed. But this discussion also brought us to a key fact, which reviewers seems to keep overlooking:

the show only follows the original checklist, not the original installation!

Just compare the installation photos of a primary picture at the top of Saltz’s article. By departing from the original installation plan, Zwirner implicitly denies one of the most radical, if latent, innovations of the Green Gallery show (Flavin’s first show using only fluorescent light): “situational” art — the dissolution of discrete objects into an experiential field.

Of course, by straying from the particulars of the Green Gallery installation Zwirner also prevents the show from being one giant representation. And what ’s more in the spirit of Dan Flavin than keeping works like a primary picture obstinately, ironically abstract?

The archives of the Saint Louis Art Museum have been a major resource as we’ve prepared Dan Flavin: Constructed Light, largely because they have so much material related to Flavin’s exhibition at SLAM in 1973. Soon you can find the best of the best “from the vault” on our Flavin web catalogue, notably the recording of a radio interview Flavin gave when he was promoting the St. Louis show. Most of this interview hasn’t been heard since it was broadcast on KFUO in ‘73, and some of it was never broadcast at all.

In addition to the SLAM exhibition, Flavin discusses his responsibilities as an artist, the motivation behind his use of fluorescent light, his opinion of the term “minimalist,” and the extent to which he welcomed the “religious associations” sometimes prompted by his work.

Until now, to hear the whole recording you had to have a reel-to-reel. In the web catalogue you’ll find — what else? — clear, accessible digital audio. So stay tuned. In a couple of weeks: Dan Flavin in his own words.

This week in the Village Voice R.C. Baker writes up the Flavin show at Zwirner & Wirth in New York City. His verdict: “it’s the freshest, most challenging and uplifting exhibition in town.” That’s really saying something, especially since it’s a recreation of Flavin’s exhibition at the Green Gallery in 1964.

You might say the Pulitzer takes the opposite tack with Flavin. Instead of recreating a historic installation, we’re presenting a totally new one. The difficulty (and necessity) of installing thoroughly situational art in the absence of the artist is an issue at the heart of both the print and web publications we’re preparing to release early in April. Keep an eye out for them. And if you can, go see Flavin in New York!

What does it mean to really love a work of art?  Perhaps nothing less than to infuse your life with its image for all time with a tattoo.  I used to a know a guy who had Michelangelo’s famous hands of God and Adam tattooed across his shoulder blades.  I thought that was devotion.  But today I have discovered a tattoo that puts those hands in perspective.  Look at this tatoo of Max Beckmann’s “Fisherwomen” on the arm of Sal, one of the guys who helped install the Pulitzer’s current exhibition (which includes “Fisherwomen”). Not only is it huge, it’s personalized: the two figures on the right have been made to look like him and his girlfriend!  That is some serious devotion.  Wow.

Here’s a little activity for you: go to the website of the Poetry Foundation and do a search for poems that include the word “water”. Or better yet, just click this link. The archive turns up an incredible 839 poems. There’s “Home-Thoughts from the Sea” by Robert Browning, “The River of Bees” by W.S. Merwin, “Humidifier” by Louis Gluck…and on and on. The results make for an interesting electronic anthology. How real are the affinities? That’s the kind of question some writers will be taking on at the Pulitzer on December 6. Along with the Poetry Foundation, we’re presenting an event at which writers Andrew Joron, Arthur Sze, Cole Swenson, and John Yau will discuss just what water might have to do with poetry. Talk could go from Homer to who knows…maybe, from the 839, Robert Creeley’s “The Pool” (take a look).

The archive of events on our website, under “Events and Programs,” is expanding all the time.  In the next few weeks we’ll add material related to two symposia for Portrait/Homage/Embodiment.  Expect pictures, written reflections by the participants, and - for the first time - some audio clips.  (Actually I’m sifting through the recordings right now.)  Of course, there is a lot to see under “Events and Programs” already.  If you haven’t been recently, check out Raphael Rubinstein’s response to the Pulitzer’s last poetry panel and Harvard grad students’ reactions to last year’s Sugimoto symposium.

P.S.  Holiday on Monday; next update on Tuesday!

A Nelson-Atkins post?  I spoke too soon.  Two friends I wanted to meet up with in Kansas City couldn’t make it, so the trip is temporarily postponed.  Instead, over the weekend, I checked out an old favorite that’s getting better all the time: Washington University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, aka “The Milly.”  (Officially the university always calls it “The Kemper,” but it’s “The Milly” to all the students and art lovers I know.) 

The permanent collection galleries start with a serious 1-2-3 punch: Pollock’s late Sleeping Effort #3; a juicy abstract Guston; and  de Kooning’s Saturday Night (from the same moment as The Met’s Easter Monday).  There’s also a nice selection of cubism from various moments - a Gris from 1916, Braques from the 1930s, and an exceptionally good Picasso from the 1950s - Women of Algiers (Variation N).  The last - a double homage to Delacroix and Matisse - was a major crowd magnet when it was shown in MoMA’s MatissePicasso show.  (Plus it is one of the few versions not in a private collection.)

A visit to the Milly also allows you to survey the work of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki.  The museum, one of Maki’s most recent designs, is situated in an Art & Architecture School complex that he renovated, which includes his very first commission (Steinberg Hall).  That’s pretty much Maki A to Z…so much to explore in our own backyard!

In our Cube Gallery right now you can get a little taste of the Nelson-Atkins Museum.  Half the room is covered in constructed paintings by Richard Tuttle, including the Nelson Atkins’ pinkish, wavy Wave of 1964-5.  If it whets your appetite for more, well, Kansas City is only a three-and-a-half-hour drive from St. Louis.   This weekend I’m going for the very first time.  I’ve heard nothing but good things about the museum’s new Bloch Building.  Check back next week for a report!

The organization of a library can be highly revealing.  Donald Judd, for instance, is said to have arranged his personal collection of art books according to artists’ birth dates so that he could easily see what precedents artists in every moment had to confront.  It was a history of dealing with history, for his own use.  The organization of the Pulitzer library may be just as telling about the institution’s aims.  The two main sections are artists and architects, both arranged first by last name, then by date of publication.  Among other things, this arrangement tends to stress how individual artists remain relevant to the present: one can easily see that there are books from 2007 on both Monet and Matthew Barney.  Beyond the artist and architect sections there are sections on artistic movements (expressionism, fauvism), the art world (biographies of curators, collectors), and institutions (you can see almost all the publications from certain museums side by side).  It’s a history of histories and then some.

As we prepare for our next exhibition we are constantly looking for statements about water by the artists in the show. We want to know how it has affected them artistically, personally…and whatever it is about water that has engaged them.

In some cases, these statements are hard to come by. Not so for Henri Matisse, whose Bather (1909) in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art was installed here yesterday. Jack Flam’s invaluable Matisse on Art preserves a number of references to water–at least in the context of Matisse’s Tahiti trip of 1930.

We intend to reprint one of these statements in the free visitors’ booklet that accompanies Water. Another, from Matisse’s 1952 interview with Andre Verdet, is here to whet your appetite for all the Matisses in the show (four works in all, including two post-Tahiti).

Verdet: Did your stay in Tahiti have a great influence on your work?

Matisse: The stay in Tahiti was very profitable…I used to bathe in the lagoon. I swam around the brilliant corals emphasized by the sharp black accents of holothurians. I would plunge my head into the water, transparent above the absinth bottom of the lagoon, my eyes wide open…and then suddenly I would lift my head above the water and gaze at the luminous whole.

Reading this, the meaning of one line in Matisse’s Jazz comes into sharp focus for me: “Lagoons: wouldn’t you be one of the seven wonders of the Paradise of painters?”