Acquisition: Flavin at SFMOMA

SFMOMA has acquired its first Dan Flavin: An iconic the diagonal of May 25, 1963. The version SFMOMA purchased is blue. It's currently on view on the museum's second floor.

The early history of Flavin's diagonals is somewhat, er, non-linear. Flavin's initial diagonal, later dedicated to Constantin Brancusi, was yellow, but the first one he exhibited was daylight white and was shown in the iconic "Black, White, and Gray" show at the Wadsworth Atheneum in January, 1964. When Flavin showed diagonal next, at NYC's Kaymar Gallery in March, 1964, it was in cool white and he dedicated that one to Robert Rosenblum. Since then Brancusi has been associated with the yellow color, and Dia owns the original. The cool white version remained dedicated to Rosenblum and, so far as I know, is in a private collection.

Later, apparently in 1966 when Flavin had his first European exhibition at Rudolf Zwirner's gallery, Flavin initiated an inventory of light editions and created nine versions -- yellow/Brancusi, cool white/Rosenblum, and seven other colors. Flavin dated all of them 1963 and capped each edition at three. SFMOMA's blue diagonal, which Flavin 'created' in 1966, is thus dated 1963.

I've always liked Flavin's description of his own diagonal epiphany, first written for Artforum and then later revised (and revised):

From a recent diagram, I declared the diagonal of personal ecstasy (the diagonal of May 25, 1963, a common eight-foot strip with fluorescent light of any commercially available color. At first I chose "gold." ... There was literally no need to compose this system definitively; it seemed to sustain itself directly, dynamically, dramatically in my workroom wall -- a buoyant and insistent gaseous image which, through brilliance, somewhat betrayed its physical presence into approximate invisibility.

Related: Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights is $50 off here.