Last Thursday - since it was the first Thursday of the month - the Pulitzer was open from 6-9pm so visitors could view the Flavin works at night.  My parents and grandmother came out for dinner (at Hodaks! Another St. Louis must-visit, if you’re unfamiliar) and to see the exhibition.

It was really nice outside, so we went out on the watercourt patio to enjoy it for a little bit.  The colors bouncing off the water were so incredible, I had to run to my office and grab the camera and take a picture.  As with most photographs of Flavin, the picture doesn’t do it justice - but I wanted to post it anyway:

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 Pulitzer’s current exhibition has an interesting twist: it is two exhibitions in one. The registrars’ department is now preparing for the installation of phase two of Dan Flavin: Constructed Light to be completed by May 16, 2008.Part of the installation process is as simple as changing lamp colors in several of the Flavins. It is more complicated in the lower level hallway where the objects’ fixtures will be reconfigured and the lamp colors will be changed. In all cases, the resulting objects are different works of art, creating different effects within the building’s spaces.

We will be making these changes over a few days the week of May 12. On Wednesday, May 14, the Pulitzer is open as usual and phase one of the exhibition will still be on view except in the lower level hallway. We will still be installing in that hallway so that all will be ready for the phase two “opening” at the Grand Center Arts Walk at 5 p.m. on Friday, May 16.

David Bonetti wrote a great review of our Flavin exhibition in yesterday’s Post-Dispatch.  Click here.

Also - our exhibition print booklets (which complements our website catalogue) were literally JUST delivered to our doorstep.  So be sure to visit Wednesday to pick up your very own copy, and let us know what you think.

I wrote a post a while back on The Light Project, a series of outdoor installations we’re planning in conjunction with the Flavin exhibition. Two of the artists, Sebastian Hungerer & Rainer Kehres, were here all last week discussing the details of their artwork, which is planned for the burnt church on Spring Avenue (around the corner from the Pulitzer). That location in itself is an interesting blog topic - I’ll report on that - with photos - soon.

The two artists are also going to be involved with our Community Light Project. They met with Lisa and the participating schools and institutions throughout the week. Lisa is working on a blog post with more details on how that’s all coming along.

In the meantime, we’re also in the process of plotting out the web and print catalogue components for both projects - we have a meeting next week to finalize some more of the content details. If you have any ideas of information you’d like to see, feel free to leave a comment here and let us know!

UPDATE:  I’ve just posted The Light Project press release on our website, if you’re curious.

flavin.pulitzerarts.org

Take a look at the following:

- Interview conducted by Matthias Waschek (Director of the Pulitzer) with Tiffany Bell (exhibition curator) and Steve Morse (exhibition coordinator).

- Interview conducted by Tiffany Bell with Emily Rauh Pulitzer (founder of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, and curator of the 1973 Flavin exhibition at SLAM).

- Interview with Dan Flavin himself - from the ‘73 exhibition with photo of him working on the installation.

- Exploration of the galleries and Flavin’s work through an interactive map. View still photographs, videos moving you through the space, and one incredible timelapse.

ENJOY.

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.

As Camran mentioned in his last post (and one of the reasons why my posts have been fewer the last few weeks), we’re busy with the production of our print and online catalogues for Flavin. Right now we’re in the thick of the editing stages which means a lot of back and forth and a lot of eyes to make sure that everything is cited correctly and there are no typos. We’re aiming for the first half of April to have everything up and running.  In the meantime, Camran will be writing soon about some exciting source material he found at the Saint Louis Art Museum. This will be appearing on our web catalogue and will be available for the first time since 1973…

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!

With each of our exhibitions comes lots of related programming. One of the major projects right now is an endeavor that’s new for us as an institution - in collaboration with contemporary art curators from the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and White Flag Projects, we are organizing an outdoor light project in Grand Center. Four artists (or rather three individual artists and one collaborative team) have been invited to present site-responsive outdoor installations which employ projected or emanating light. The artists are Ann Lislegaard (Copenhagen, Denmark), Sebastian Hungerer & Rainer Kehres (Karlsruhe, Germany), Spencer Finch (New York) and Jason Peters (New York).

You can check out Jason’s work tonight at White Flag - there’s an opening from 7-10pm. Here’s a pic of the work in progress:

And next week Elise, who has been working a lot on this project, promises a blog post about how the outdoor light project is shaping up.