Guggenheim Tondo, 1992

Dan Flavin was one of the key artists in the minimalist movement during the early 1960s. He enjoyed using industrial materials that were massed produced and commercially available. Although he was a painter and sketcher, he was also known for his work with fluorescent lights. He was known for using common materials that many people seen as boring and sometimes ugly. Flavin began incorporating light into his art and soon became famous for his Icon series. After discovering that light was his medium, he then began producing installations and sculptural pieces of fluorescent light fixtures and tubes. There was no one specific statement that Flavin was attempting to convey with his art. He simply let the lighting respond to the architectural setting. Although the artist did not use his art for any type of personal statement, others found the art full of narrative statements, religious conversions, and intellectual thoughtfulness. Because Flavin used perishable materials, he limited the life of his artistic work; therefore, each piece was anything but timeless. This was the artist's attempt to emphasise each piece as unique because it only had a limited amount of time to exist as art. In the month of May1963, Flavin discovered his signature iconic diagonal light. This diagonal light represented a dynamic impression that could be built upon and infinitely repeated. The light used allowed the art to have a continuous flow instead of the art having a stationary feel. Flavin was considered the artist who exploited liveliness through the speed of light.