Dan Flavin’s interest in the emotional impact of electric light is clearest in his enigmatic “monuments” series, which he made from 1964 into the 1990s. These works commemorate historical figures and personal connections through color combinations produced from a limited palette of commercially available fluorescent tubes. Here, the collision of white and an eerie, deep red evokes the harrowing experiences of one Mrs. Reppin, the German gallerist Rudolph Zwirner’s mother-in-law, during World War II. The installation does not harmonize with other light sources, and Flavin intended the work to be viewed in isolation, heightening its unsettling effect. Despite its serious theme, this and the other “monuments” are tinged with irony. What good is a monument that only endures for the lifespan of a fluorescent lamp?
Details
- Artist Name: Dan Flavin (American, 1933-1996)
- Title: "monument" on the survival of Mrs. Reppin
- Date: 1966
- Medium: Warm white and red fluorescent light
- Dimensions: overall: 26 1/8 x 85 x 60 in. (66.4 x 216.0 x 152.4 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Museum Purchase, Fellows Acquisition Fund
- Accession Number: P.1969.001
- Copyright: © Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; courtesy of David Zwirner, New York
Object Information
American Art of the 1960s from the Norton Simon Museum
- Los Angeles, The Temporary Contemporary, 1990-03-13 to 1990-06-13
- Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1988-10-04 to 1989-02-05
Flavin exhibition
- Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, 1966-09 to 1969-12
"monument" on the survival of Mrs. Reppin: An Artwork by Dan Flavin
- Norton Simon Museum, 2013-03-08 to 2013-08-19
Los Angeles to New York: The Dwan Gallery 1959-1971
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2017-03-05 to 2017-06-18
Inaugural Exhibition / Extended Loan
- Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, 1999-01-18 to 2004-05-30
American Art Since 1950 from the Norton Simon Museum
- Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1990-06-30 to 1990-09-09
- Knight, Christopher, Art of the Sixties and Seventies: The Panza Collection, no. 8 p. 173
- Pasadena Art Museum, Recent Acquisitions 1969, 1969, no. 25
- James Meyer and others, From Los Angeles to New York: The Dwan Gallery 1959-1971, 2016, cat. 65 pp. 71, 171(ill.), 372
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