Light Works: Dan Flavin and Robert Irwin

Stanford University



Beginning in the 1920s, with the work of the Constructivists, electric light became a medium for art. With the advent of Minimalism in the late 1960s, artists found that using light as a medium could challenge perception and be impersonal as well as emotionally engaging. This installation features two large pieces.

One by Dan Flavin is an example of the artist’s use of mass-produced fluorescent light. The second work, an untitled disc by Robert Irwin, typifies the interest in light and space that occupied a number of artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s. These two works complement Sculptures from the Fisher Family Collection and provide another look at the diverse artistic approaches in the 1960s.

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