Lot Essay
"I want to tell you how delighted I am with my new Flavin sculpture. It is, as you know, one of the Tatlins and looks like a shining diamond in my entry hall. It's on a white canvas wall which is very big, maybe 12 feet high. That makes my 5th Flavin - each one is so personal and individual that they are wonderful and joyous to live with."
(Betty Freeman, in a letter to Flavin dated 1985)
'monument' for V Tatlin is an early example from the celebrated and long-running series of works dedicated to the Russian avant-garde artist Vladimir Tatlin that Flavin began in 1964. Flavin's art has been directly inspired and influenced by much of the work of the Russian avant-garde. In particular, he admired the way that the Russians adopted the role of engineers rather than traditional artists. They had attempted to integrate art into everyday life and dismantled the conventional boundaries between the viewer and the work. In particular, Tatlin was a major influence on Flavin. His use of corner reliefs to activate and engage with the real space of the room can be seen in Flavin's own corner pieces. Tatlin's insistence on artists of the new industrial era, who produced works made from "real" industrial materials such as iron, glass and wood was a major influence on Flavin's adoption of industrial fluorescent light tubes.
Flavin's 'monuments' for Tatlin are not homages to the Russian, but rather poignant commentary on the ultimate failure of Tatlin's modernist ideals. Taking the form of a tower of light or a fantastic futuristic glowing rocket ship in flight, Flavin's "monuments" illuminate their environment with a sense of feverish optimism and enthusiasm for the future. Mimicking also the structure of Tatlin's greatest unrealised project, his vast tower, the Monument to the Third Communist International, these works can be seen as "monuments" to an idealised view of the future that was never to be.
The ethereal and temporal nature of Flavin's 'monuments' for Tatlin reflects and ironises this fleeting moment of utopianism. The fact that their essential constituent is a finite amount of light is paramount to their meaning. It is also a poignant reminder of the sad fate that overtook many Soviet artists, not least Tatlin himself, who died in poverty and neglect, spurned by the state to which he had dedicated both his art and his life. "I always refer to these 'monuments' in quotes," Flavin has explained, "in order to emphasize the ironic humor of temporary monuments. These monuments only survive as long as the light system is useful (2,100 hours)."
(Betty Freeman, in a letter to Flavin dated 1985)
'monument' for V Tatlin is an early example from the celebrated and long-running series of works dedicated to the Russian avant-garde artist Vladimir Tatlin that Flavin began in 1964. Flavin's art has been directly inspired and influenced by much of the work of the Russian avant-garde. In particular, he admired the way that the Russians adopted the role of engineers rather than traditional artists. They had attempted to integrate art into everyday life and dismantled the conventional boundaries between the viewer and the work. In particular, Tatlin was a major influence on Flavin. His use of corner reliefs to activate and engage with the real space of the room can be seen in Flavin's own corner pieces. Tatlin's insistence on artists of the new industrial era, who produced works made from "real" industrial materials such as iron, glass and wood was a major influence on Flavin's adoption of industrial fluorescent light tubes.
Flavin's 'monuments' for Tatlin are not homages to the Russian, but rather poignant commentary on the ultimate failure of Tatlin's modernist ideals. Taking the form of a tower of light or a fantastic futuristic glowing rocket ship in flight, Flavin's "monuments" illuminate their environment with a sense of feverish optimism and enthusiasm for the future. Mimicking also the structure of Tatlin's greatest unrealised project, his vast tower, the Monument to the Third Communist International, these works can be seen as "monuments" to an idealised view of the future that was never to be.
The ethereal and temporal nature of Flavin's 'monuments' for Tatlin reflects and ironises this fleeting moment of utopianism. The fact that their essential constituent is a finite amount of light is paramount to their meaning. It is also a poignant reminder of the sad fate that overtook many Soviet artists, not least Tatlin himself, who died in poverty and neglect, spurned by the state to which he had dedicated both his art and his life. "I always refer to these 'monuments' in quotes," Flavin has explained, "in order to emphasize the ironic humor of temporary monuments. These monuments only survive as long as the light system is useful (2,100 hours)."