As I mentioned last week, we officially started collecting lamps at our film event last Thursday. Here’s a little more background info on that project:

For the next few weeks, we’re asking members of the St. Louis community to donate their old lamps, lampshades, lanterns, etc. to be a part of an outdoor light installation opening in September. The artists Sebastian Hungerer and Rainer Kehres will be taking these lamps and re-creating the roof of the Spring Ave. church in Grand Center - which burned in 2001. Here’s a Photoshopped document they created of what the installed work will look like:

We’re trying to collect around 500, so Trina and Jenny, our Community Engagement interns for the summer, have been working hard all week - going to different neighborhood associations, farmers markets, antique stores, etc. in search for lamp donations. Well yesterday, we hit the jackpot: an antique store donated over 100 lamps! Here’s Trina talking about the windfall:

UPDATE:  I almost forgot: We have a section online where we’ll be documenting the collection process, the stories behind donated lamps and their owners, upcoming lamp collection events, and overall updates on the project.  It’s at lamp-collection.pulitzerarts.org

Earlier in the week, my cousin-in-law emailed me some questions he had about the Flavin exhibition. He hit on great points that we’ve heard from a lot of visitors as well, so I asked him if I could turn his questions into a Q&A blog post.  Because he’s very kind, and also a fan of blogging himself, he agreed. So here we go:

1) It seems like his work would depend a lot on the dimensions of the space. Had he planned a show at the Pulitzer before his death? 

He did not have plans for a show at the Pulitzer - in fact, the Pulitzer building was still being conceptualized when he passed away in 1996. But it is true that his work depends on and strongly interacts with the dimensions of the space in which it is installed. Each of the works on view in our galleries existed previously, but in different incarnations. The exhibition’s guest curator, Tiffany Bell, phrased it like this: “Flavin made site-specific works, but I wouldn’t categorize any of his work at the Pulitzer as such. Some of the works can be installed in a variety of spaces so long as the installation follows a few guidelines established by Flavin: they have a kind of object-like integrity. I would call the others, made up of repeated modules, “site-situational”: the dimensions of the installation are a function of the given space.” The diagonal in the Main Gallery is a great example of this. It was installed according to Flavin’s specifications for the artwork, however, due to the size of the wall it’s the longest this work has ever been.

2) Does someone lay these out in the “Flavin-Style”?

Yes. According to Tiffany’s curatorial choices for placing the works in the galleries, Stephen Morse - the Exhibition Coordinator and Conservator for the Flavin Studio - was here throughout the installation process. He made sure the works were installed according to the precedents that Flavin himself set for each work. From Tiffany, “A lot of it is fairly straightforward. There were set standards. The work goes on the floor, it has a set height… We have a lot of drawings and documentation. Of course, questions come up in the process of installation. Then we try to record what we do and why we do it. That’s one reason why this exhibition is really exciting: it is an opportunity to pose questions that have come up, test premises we have worked with, and to draw people into certain possibilities.”

3) These are “mass-produced light fixtures and fluorescent tubes,” so what makes it Flavin and not just me lighting my house? 

Good question! What makes it a Flavin is that each work in the Pulitzer was conceived by the artist, and is installed according to his specifications. To some extent, it’s also a matter of administration. Often Flavin provided with each work a certificate of authenticity, which designated the work as his.

Phase Two of Flavin just went live on our web catalogue, reflecting the new images of the new artworks and colors now on view in the galleries. It’s here. We’re also finalizing the print version, which will be inserted into our current visitors brochure. Tiffany Bell wrote a great introduction for this insert, giving some background to the lamp changes:

“Serial production is a fundamental characteristic of Dan Flavin’s art. Not only did he make groups of works presented in a series, he had favored formats such as his “near-square cornered installations” and grid structures that he used throughout his career. By changing the colors of the lamps in these structures, he made very different works. In Phase 2 of Dan Flavin: Constructed Light, the colors have been changed in some of the installations on view to highlight this aspect of Flavin’s art and provide an alternative proposal for the integration of Flavin’s lights with Tadao Ando’s architecture.”

Here is one of Robert Pettus’ photos of Phase Two:

Tonight, in the midst of being open late for the first Thursday of the month, we’re also hosting a light-inspired film night.  The projections will get going around 8:30pm - when it finally starts to get a little darker out!- but you can come by and see the exhibition anytime after 6pm.

Similar to last year’s “Water Works” event, we’ve invited St. Louis-area filmmakers to submit short, silent films, this time employing light as the key element.  The submitted pieces have been put on a loop and will be projected on multiple exterior walls of the Pulitzer building.

During this event last year, Webster University film students took some great videos throughout the evening and interviewed both guests and filmmakers.  To listen to what they had to say and to get an idea of what tonight’s event will be like, click here, here, here or here.

We’re also kicking off our lamp collection tonight.  There will be lots more coming on that, but stop by to pick up some information on this project - and feel free to bring by an old lamp, lampshade, or lantern if you have one.

As you know, we recently changed the color of a number of Flavin lamps in our galleries, thereby creating “Phase 2″ of Dan Flavin: Constructed Light. You may have noticed, however, that several of the works remained the same color, including the piece installed in our first floor corridor. This work is an impressive, staggering display of overwhelmingly green light (96 two-foot green lamps tend to dominate a space!).

Despite the fact that the color of these lamps hasn’t changed, the lamps themselves are soon to be replaced - with brand new versions of their former selves (still green!). We noted that over time, some of the lamps in this work were beginning to blacken on the ends. On certain lamps, dark spots (almost like thumbprints) began to form, and a few lamps quit working altogether. The manager of the Flavin Studio indicated that this is a phenomenon that sometimes happens with Flavin’s work, especially when you get a whole bunch of tubes together in a tight space. The massing of fluorescent light can create strange effects on the lamps themselves - in this case streaking, darkening, and black spots.

As a result, we have decided to do a mass replacement of all of the lamps in this work. New two-foot green lamps will soon be installed (look for them within the next week). We’ve been told that since this blackening phenomenon happened once, it might eventually happen with the new lamps as well. However, we are expecting that this mid-exhibition replacement will give the piece a rejuvenated look, one that will hopefully last through the extent of the show.

Before today when we walked down the green hallway, there was a yellow vertical piece at the end  situated on the corner of the wall in the Entrance Gallery.

This morning, we were met with a new color at the end of the hallway:

You’ll have to come by tomorrow night to see what else has changed…

So right now, we’re in the midst of re-installing certain works in our exhibition for phase 2 of Dan Flavin: Constructed Light.  It’ll open this Friday, during the Grand Center Gallery Walk.  The installation is on hold today because our galleries are open to the public (30 minutes left to see the phase 1 artworks!), but will resume again tomorrow.  I’ll try to sneak some photos of the process.  We’re also working on scheduling the photography for phase 2 to put in both our print and web catalogues, along with a description about the change and the precedent set by Dan Flavin for doing this.  I’ll be posting those as I get them.  Stay tuned.

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.