ILLUMINATE SF

"MONUMENT" FOR V. TATLIN

Dan Flavin (1969)

May 14, 2016 - ongoing

Yerba Buena: 151 Third Street, SFMOMA (view map)

Few artists can boast having explored a single medium, and an unusual one at that, as tenaciously and consistently as Dan Flavin with his signature fluorescent light tubes. His "monument" for V. Tatlin (1969) at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is one of 39 "monuments" to Vladimir Tatlin (1885 - 1953) created between 1964 and 1990, because the Russian artist's ambitious but unrealized project to unite art and technology was of particular interest to Flavin. This stepped arrangement of cool white fluorescent light is one of this many light "propositions," made up of standardized commercially available materials much like the readymades by Marcel Duchamp that he admired.

Best Viewing: SFMOMA, Floor 5, Pop, Minimal, and Figurative Arts: The Fisher Collection. The exhibition includes works from the 1960s and beyond to provoke a dialogue about the nature of art and its position within American culture. Featured American Pop and Minimal artists include light artist Dan Flavin plus Chuck Close, Philip Guston, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol, among many others. Doris and Don Fisher's belief in the power of art to enrich lives and spur creativity led them to share much of their collection, first with employees at their San Francisco - based Gap Inc. headquarters, and now at SFMOMA, where one couple's shared passion for art has become a vital part of the cultural fabric of San Francisco.

© Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: Ian Reeves. SFMOMA grants permission to use image(s) only to the extent of its ownership rights relating to those image(s). Certain works of art, as well as photographs of those works of art, may be protected by copyright, trademark, or related interests not owned by SFMOMA. The responsibility for ascertaining whether any such rights exist and for obtaining all other necessary permissions remains solely with the party reproducing the image(s).