Dan Flavin (1933-1996)
from proposition two of diagram one for
May 15, 1964,
1964

Colored pencil and pencil on paper
11 × 14 inches (27.9 × 35.6 cm)

© Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Artist
Type
Drawing 13
Date
1960s 72
Location

Donald Judd met Dan Flavin in 1962 at a gathering in a Brooklyn apartment organized to discuss the possibility of a cooperative artist-run gallery. They exhibited together a year later when their work was included in New Work: Part I at Richard Bellamy’s Green Gallery, New York (January 8–February 2, 1963). As their mutual friend, the artist John Wesley, has said of their friendship, “[the two] became Flavin and Judd for a while. The two names were together.”1

Like Donald Judd, Dan Flavin avoided the word “sculpture” when discussing his works in three dimensions, sometimes using the words “installation,” “system,” or “proposition,” emphasizing the variable relationship between the lights he used and the surrounding space. Using the word “diagram” to describe his drawings underscored their technical nature: “the colored lines, which seem to float in space, were an attempt to visualize the effect of the colored lights.” This work and from proposition three of diagram one for May 15, 1964 have the same configuration, but with the colors reversed.

The work for which this “proposition” was realized by Flavin was untitled, 1964, an edition of five works in red and yellow fluorescent light with the red light on the bottom.

1 Marianne Stockebrand, “A Conversation with John Wesley,” Chinati Foundation newsletter 10 (October 2005), 1.