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Fluorescent Bulb Art

                                                        Fluorescent Bulb Art 

We display four artworks made with colored bulbs mounted in common hardware store type fluorescent fixtures.


                                   


                                          

The artist Dan Flavin, who conceived these works, pioneered using an assemblage of fluorescent lights as art.  Please look at his early work from 1963, called Diagonal, which uses a single 96 inch yellow fluorescent tube. The wall glow and the floor reflection create a fine overall effect like light reflections on water, and as with water, the slight undulations in the floor create the zig zags of the reflection.  Flavin used stock fixtures and stock colored bulbs.  That is a big advantage in case of breakdowns and needed replacements.

                                            
                                                
                                                

                                                


                                                 
                                        

                    

 

 Now look at our photos of two similar Flavin horizontal works set in a corner.  In both cases the two bulbs facing us are blue.  How can the two works, both with blue bulbs showing, look so different?  I suspect that one of the two works uses a green bulb, hidden, attached in the back, facing away from us, to cast green light on the walls in the corner.  The other work likely uses a pink bulb in the back, casting pink light into the corner. Notice the attractive mixing of the front and back light on the walls.

Please look at another Flavin multicolor work from 1986 with a long nearly vertical tube tilted into a corner.  Flavin and other minimalist artists often used minimal or no titles for their works or in this case ‒  untitled.  If I had the privilege, I would name this work Aurora in the Corner.


                                                    

                                                 

Let’s observe closely and try to deduce what we can’t actually observe.  We see a long vertical white bulb facing towards us having a red or pink painted case.  Suppose that fixture is eight feet long.  Behind the case, hidden to us, facing away, perhaps there is, starting from a foot above floor level, a four feet long blue bulb, and higher up, a two feet long white bulb with the metal case painted light green.  That would explain more or less what we see, but the exact details are less certain because most discussions of Flavin say nothing about his technique.   

From the above example, you see that to explain his works, we have to account for the direct light from each bulb, the colored light reflected off the colored metal case and reflected off the walls, and their interactions, that is, the mixing of the light cast from each of those sources. 

     Additive Color Mixing

This light interaction phenomenon is called additive color mixing, when light beams emitted or reflected overlap each other.  This mixing is different from what happens when paint is mixed together. That is called subtractive color mixing which we are familiar with.  For instance blue mixed with yellow makes green.  


        

Additive mixing works differently and may seem strange at first, so look closely at our illustration of projected colors overlapping.  Think of three colored spotlights shining down onto the page, one blue, one red, and one green.  Blue and green light mixed produce cyan, blue and red mixed produce magenta, and green and red mixed produce yellow.  When you mix all three primary colored lights together, blue, red, and green equally you produce white.  These mixing results are rarely observed as clearly as with our spotlight example.  But color mixing occurs every day at the small pixel level on the illuminated screens of televisions, monitors, tablets, laptops, and phones.

                  A New Problem

Decades have passed since Flavin acquired bulbs for his fixtures.  Those bulbs gave a limited life and need to be replaced regularly.  As I understand, the original stock colored fluorescent bulbs are no longer available.  So, curators have to obtain custom built expensive bulbs or dare we suggest, switch to LEDs.

That raises the question of correct hue and luminosity and special LEDs would still require custom manufacture.

                                    Questions
        Is Dan Flavin a conceptual artist?  Are his works ready-mades?   Do fluorescent bulbs have a different character than LEDs? 
         Sol LeWitt explicitly wanted qualified people to follow his plans and make his art.  Could that be done with Flavin’s art?  Even if he never asked for it to be done?
        LeWitt left enough leeway in his instructions that the resulting art might be called an instance rather than a copy.  How do you feel about copies?  Who are the people who do not want copies made?  Why?








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