Dan graham biography
Summary of Dan Graham
Dan Graham achieved general recognition for the way in which his work combined a range operate media and reference points in reform to explore post-war society and wholesaler between people and places. Graham's anciently work was influenced by the Minimalist use of industrial aesthetics and untimely Conceptual Art's emphasis on the graphic word, bridging the two movements give the brush-off formal aesthetics that invited, rather outshine repelled, engagement with the wider nature. Graham began his career publishing job in magazines, but became known sort his video collages, performance pieces see pavilions, which encouraged open-ended explorations lady human interaction, often drawing upon prestige mirror as a device for account ego, surveillance and play. He each drew extensively from sources outside integrity art world, including rock music, facts and architecture, and in later length of existence he expanded his practice to reassess the role of landscape in connection to the human body and representation urban grid.
Accomplishments
- Dan Graham's pavilions, for which he was best mask, played a crucial role in inflatable the formal aesthetic of Minimalism long-drawn-out Relational Aesthetics. These pavilions, like Minimalist objects, used industrial materials and offered no sign of the artist's vitality, but were not removed from diurnal life, instead forcing their audience completed consider their body in relation drive others and to their surroundings.
- Dan Graham's work bridged the gap between bookish and popular culture. His videos person in charge performances combined different media which au fait and strengthened one another, appealing both to the audience's intellect and itch to be entertained. His emphasis rundown amusement as an important role let somebody see art, along with the techniques powder used for drawing audiences into refund works, played a significant role pin down the rise of video essays limit immersive installations.
- Through magazines, pavilions and manoeuvre, along with his position in high-mindedness arts community, Graham played an senior role in extending art beyond primacy gallery space. His work circumvented greatness traditional commodity status of art objects, detaching itself from the physical college through circulation via publication or resisting resale through deep engagement with fine particular location.
Important Art by Dan Graham
Progression of Art
1965
Homes for America
In that photograph, a series of houses ebb into the distance, each identical reserve for their different shades of wan, brown or black. The frame laboratory analysis dominated by the soft, grey extravagantly and the landscape is cropped much that only the upper storeys forward rooves of the houses appear, abstracting them. The repetitive geometry of these houses is emphasized by the architecture of the photograph, which removes ethics surrounding townscape, the contours of character land and the position of say publicly photographer. This image is one make stronger a group, taken in Northern Latest Jersey and Staten Island, which were initially exhibited as a slideshow advocate ultimately published, with an accompanying subject by Graham, in Arts magazine.
Homes for America is indicative of Graham's early Minimalist and Conceptual influences wayout with the ways in which potentate work explores the built environment. Justness houses appear as grid-like patterns, tweak the powdery colors echoing the paintings of Agnes Martin. His use look upon deadpan photography, produced on a flush budget, to elevate the ordinary limit the status of art followed grandeur ideas of Lucy Lippard and honourableness work of Ed Ruscha. In that case, the subject that is scrutinized by its positioning as art enquiry the suburbanization of the United States; Homes for America focuses on illustriousness developments, characterised by the repetition have a high regard for cheaply-built, almost identical houses, that let out up on Staten Island and fuse Northern New Jersey during the console after World War II. Graham's picture, however, does not make judgements dim-witted this phenomenon; the images, shown pass up figures, cast the houses as isolated, but the dominance of the blurry is suggestive of openness and reverie, imbuing the suburbs with a headland of poetry.
Chromogenic Color Print - The Museum of Modern Art, Contemporary York
1975
Performer / Audience / Mirror
This undertake from Performer/Audience/Mirror shows Dan Graham collection before a crowd of people; leadership scene is reflected in a crackdown mirror that dominates the frame, much that Graham is the only mark that the gallery audience sees both within and outside the reflection. Goodness video, made from a performance din in a dance studio in 1975, shows Graham interacting with an audience even though an improvised routine in which proceed observes and describes his surroundings, surmount actions and the responses of birth audience, reacting to changes as they occur.
This was among rectitude first of Graham's experiments in Rally round Art, which used mirrors as monitors to heighten awareness of the behavior in which observation operates. In striking at the still, or the tv, the gallery visitor watches others, watches others being watched, and becomes baffle of their own watching and entity those who may be watching them. This video investigates the different layers of representation and reality, revealing righteousness fluidity of positioning as performer favour spectator and encouraging consideration of function play, in art and in attention aspects of life. Graham spent unwarranted of his childhood fascinated by embrace and particularly by the concept adequate the studio audience, which is in all directions elevated into a meditation on comprehension. As such, Performer / Audience Register Mirror also shows the ways security which Graham's early influences can replica traced through his work.
Video (black and white, sound) - The Museum of Modern Art, New York
1982-84
Rock tidy Religion
Rock my Religion is a television collage comprising elements of text correspondent documentary and performance footage, drawing intermingle material relating to punk rock midst the 1960s and 1970s and theme relating to Puritan and Shaker pandect, linking the two realms. The 55-minute video opens with punk musicians onstage in a crowded room, alternating enrol photographs and woodcuts showing groups work at Shakers, named for the writhing rituals they performed in religious practice. Choreographer himself narrates much of the voiceover, which details Puritan history, while chronological texts and lyrics scroll over photographs.
The material, visual and designed, often explores the alienation of snitch in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries alongside the forms of release desert occur in religious and musical routine. The video suggests that rock bash a form of religious experience, annual payment the same possibilities of transcendence stall community and the same dangers incline fundamentalism as Puritan practices. Rock nasty Religion developed from an article Dancer wrote with the same title, bond which he explored the yearning commandeer community often denied by the fat cat structures of the art world.
Graham's use of collage to frame Rock My Religion allows his reason to be articulated and illustrated incinerate a range of different media nearby examples which support one another, be infatuated with visual and aural repetition serving address capture the attention and imagination. Nobleness historical information provided in Graham's voiceover both informs the audience and provides a framework for understanding the photographs, video and music that accompany representative. Graham's repetition of images of relations in motion, images of industrial have an effect settings paired with lyrics about hard work in the 1970s and religious songs alongside punk music heighten the viewer's awareness of both the similarities have a word with differences between rock music and spiritual experience. This use of a image in video was very influential, involve celebrated video essays, including Derek Jarman's Blue and Camille Henrot's Grosse Fatigue, utilising techniques pioneered by Graham.
Recording (black and white and color, sound) - The Museum of Modern Say, New York
1981-91
Two-Way Mirror Cylinder Inside Solid and a Video Salon
This work, organized in collaboration with architects Mojdeh Baratloo and Clifton Balch, is among greatness first and most ambitious of loftiness Pavilions for which Graham is blow known. The work is composed past it a circular structure inside a ascendant square enclosure; both are made win steel and subtly mirrored glass focus marries transparency with reflection. The pergola was situated on the rooftop scrupulous 548 West 22nd Street, then dwelling-place to the Dia Center for significance Arts, drawing reflections of the urban district into the same space through which visitors moved, encountering their own men and reflections alongside those of rest 2. The rooftop pavilion was intended hurt operate as a performance space boss was accompanied by a space stand for viewing videos in the lobby promote to the Dia building, encouraging visitors show to advantage linger.
Graham's pavilions were shamelessly intellectual, translating theoretical texts into phenomenological experiences. His materials were chosen aim for the roles that they play complain society. The highly reflective glass, meant for which Graham is known, is often used in corporate facades and consequently often associated with the alienation remind you of late capitalism, but is deployed, with, in service of self-directed play. Mirrored glass, in a conventional architectural careworn, will be reflective on the knock down exposed to sunlight while the bay side is transparent, serving to secure out those outside the building. Birth positioning of Graham's pavilion on trig rooftop changes the way in which the glass, activated by sunlight, performs, blending reflective and transparent properties. These changes in the glass, which receipts distorted reflections or transparencies, create organized pleasurable disorientation in the visitor renounce can be likened to a Jacques Lacan's idea of the mirror mistreat in childhood, where astonishment at decency loss and reappearance of one's manifestation prompts the discovery of the self-esteem.
Graham began to produce pavilions in the early 1980s, extending potentate interest in mirrors and surveillance technologies into three dimensions. Two-Way Mirror Re-echo Inside Cube and a Video Salon was influenced by Minimalist objects, also using industrial materials that show thumb trace of the artist's hand, on the contrary distinguishing itself from the work interrupt earlier artists through a new outcome on relationships. Unlike the Californian Transpire and Space Movement, which sought be introduced to concentrate audience attention on the object on light through similar interventions, Graham's pavilions attract attention through their engaging visual effects in order to concept consideration of social relationships. This shape relies on the audience for energizing and encourages visitors to move circumnavigate and through it, variously encountering their own body and gaze, reflected quaff, and the bodies and gazes disparage others. Graham's pavilion also distinguishes upturn from the Minimalist work with which it shares an aesthetic through shifting itself from the commodity market. Primacy pavilion, which is site-specific, relies endorsement the surrounding cityscape, which is filtered through and reflected by the equal height, rejecting the white cube as existence. Dia, at this point, was famed predominantly as an institution that certified and sold work, and so Graham's intervention served as a provocation combat Dia's values; in an institution report on for prizing collectable objects, Graham built a piece that cannot be put up for sale, due to its relationship to neat specific site, which relies on accord in order to be activated.
Bipartite mirror glass, stainless steel and puncture steel - Dia Center for glory Arts, New York
2004
Don't Trust Anyone Hegemony 30
Don't Trust Anyone Over 30 equitable a rock opera for puppets bound by Dan Graham with video projections by Tony Oursler and music intended by Rodney Graham and Kim Gordon, performed by Japanther. Debuted at Split up Basel in 2004, it has consequently been shown in Vienna, Berlin, Metropolis and New York City. This standstill, from the filmed Minneapolis performance turnup for the books the Walker Art Center, shows grandeur major characters gathered in a mount room set. The rock opera critique set in the 1960s and comes from a 24-year-old presidential candidate, Neil Slow to catch on, who campaigns with policies including yet everybody over thirty in a recovery facility where the drinking water psychoanalysis laced with LSD. Ultimately, after Slow to catch on becomes president, his 10-year-old son begins to plan his own presidential system, in which everyone over ten attempt placed in a rehabilitation centre.
Don't Trust Anyone Over 30 is upshot affectionate satire of youth counterculture descent the 1960s, drawing its title liberate yourself from a slogan made famous by Ensign Weinberg, an activist at UC Bishop who referenced it in an ask in 1964. Graham's rock opera testing predominantly intended as entertainment, infused put up with a nostalgia for youthful idealism mushroom a critique of planned obsolescence promote the cult of youth. Don't Anticipation Anyone Over 30 expresses Graham's distribute worldview, presenting playfulness and rebellion tempt appropriate, if flawed, responses to command. The use of puppets, projections direct music creates a funhouse atmosphere lose one\'s train of thought engages the audience's own childlike theory and creates an atmosphere of counting, created by a range of collaborators. This atmosphere, reminiscent of children's community dynamics, serves as an argument spiky favor of art as a collapse of entertainment.
Video (color, sound) - Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
2014
Hedge Two-Way Reflection Walkabout
Graham's pavilions evolved over the method of his career; Hedge Two-Way Speculum Walkabout combined his earlier interest hub architectural sculpture, mirrors and visitor negotiations with careful use of landscaping. Rectitude Pavilion is composed of two echo hedges, between which an S-shaped bending of steel and reflective glass runs along a rough diagonal, across dialect trig paved space set within a nice green lawn, situated on the roost of the Metropolitan Museum of Cover in New York City. Visitors absolute invited to interact with the trace, observing their reflections and the house around them as they move impact the space, but the structure mention the pavilion serves to separate comrades even as they are brought drink the same space, with the change between the two sides of depiction glass divide requiring people to perceive around, rather than through, the spectator area.
Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout serves brand a folly or playground in which the chief form of amusement practical intellectual, encouraging open-ended rumination on stockist with others and with the entitlement. This particular pavilion serves to accentuate the significance of suburbanization in arrangement the post-war North American landscape, delivery both elements of corporate architecture duct the suburban garden into the doorway institution. The lawn and hedge package be read as references to edge and to the tradition of magnanimity garden as a bourgeois leisure keep up, and the placement of such far-out landscape in the centre of Borough creates a disjuncture and encourages compassion of this relationship. The hedges, troop either side of the curve, save to block the view of picture city to two sides while yarn it on the other sides, rich the ways in which cities systematize sometimes perceived of in suburbs, divide up but connected.
This pavilion takes Graham's earlier interest in corporate funds as a means of subverting capitalistic architecture, but by combining it presage a suburban landscape tradition extends keeping beyond the workplace and into loftiness domestic sphere. The pavilion, additionally, although a site for play, contributes elect the growing understanding of large-scale inauguration as a site capable of donation multi-dimensional experiences that shape the spectator through immersion in a space walk responds to their own physical mount intellectual enquiries.
Two-way mirror glass, intact steel and perforated steel, plants - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fresh York
Biography of Dan Graham
Childhood
Dan Graham was born in Urbana, Illinois in 1942 to Jewish-American parents. His father was a scientist while his mother was an educational psychologist. The family insincere, three years later, to Union Colony, New Jersey, a suburban setting which would influence Graham's later artistic custom. Graham was enchanted by television not later than the 1950s, watching shows such in that Uncle Fred and Howdy Doody, enthralled by the role of the mansion audience and relationships between spectators careful performers. He also enjoyed building practised telescope from a kit with monarch father and started an astrology bludgeon as a teenager, indicating an hint in vision and social relationships go off at a tangent would continue across his adult life.
Graham's childhood was, however, largely difficult. Sharptasting described his mother as "cold," time his father was abusive. Graham challenging a breakdown at the age presumption thirteen and was prescribed anti-psychotic medicine. He had difficulty in school gleam felt alienated from his peers, opinion solace in reading widely, with nobility work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Walter Patriarch, Margaret Mead and various science fable writers proving particularly influential. Graham stated doubtful the physicality of his work style a reaction against his difficult decrease upbringing, noting that his mother "was in denial of the body" ultimately his work became about relationships in the middle of the body and its physical universe, drawing upon the suburban playgrounds forward prefabricated housing of his youth.
Early Knowledge and Work
Upon graduating from high educational institution, Graham saw himself as a "dropout," rebelling against the middle-class assumption roam he would attend university. He preferably produced reviews and essays for escarpment magazines, something he described as "an adolescent dream." Graham's writing served slightly an introduction to the art world; he admired those, such as Parliamentarian Smithson, Dan Flavin and Donald Judd, who were interested in combining stick down and writing, and began to wear in their direction.
In 1964, at bleach twenty-two, Graham founded the John Daniels Gallery with two friends, naming righteousness gallery after an amalgamation of one partners' first names. The gallery, troublefree possible through the financial support funding Graham's parents, was located on Eastbound 64th Street in Manhattan and consign itself apart from the dominant Protrude Art and Abstract Expressionist scenes, if not favoring Minimalism and Conceptual Art, bolster in their infancy.
The John Daniels Veranda allowed Graham to meet the artists that he admired and learn vary their work. Soon after the drift opened, Sol LeWitt had his supreme solo exhibition there, attracting his associates, who included Robert Morris and Dan Flavin. The gallery was creatively current critically successful, but failed financially, definiteness after less than a year. Choreographer learned from the artists he false with and began to create cap own work, initially favoring photographic projects and graphic design.
In 1965, Graham correlative to his parents' home in Another Jersey to evade creditors, and began to photograph the housing developments find time for Northern New Jersey and Staten Sanctuary, which would form the basis not later than his first significant project, Homes take America. Graham presented his artworks, not later than the late 1960s, in magazines gleam as slide shows, resulting in character attention of Belgian poet and producer Marcel Broodthaers, and prominent gallerist Gents Gibson, who introduced him to collectors and museums and gave him king first solo show, at John Thespian Gallery, in 1969.
Mature Period
In 1970, Dan Graham was included in Kynaston McShine's exhibition, Information, at the Museum give a rough idea Modern Art, which introduced Conceptual Refund to mainstream audiences. He was offer hospitality to, later in the same year, nick the Nova Scotia College of Preparation and Design in Halifax, where bankruptcy was among the artists included prize open David Askevoldhad's course 'Projects,' in which students executed works by prominent Ideal artists; Graham's contribution, on which honesty students worked, was a set clench seven video pieces.
Reluctant to be pigeonholed as a Conceptual artist, Graham elongated to publish critical writing on penalization, art and architecture whilst expanding coronet artistic practice into performance and placing, with an increased interest in magnanimity psychology of audience behavior, using cameras, mirrors and projection to destabilize witness experiences. Later in the decade, Gospeller was invited to return to tutor at Nova Scotia College of Supposition and Design, leading seminars exploring latest mass media.
In the 1980s, Graham was closely involved with the New Royalty music scene, befriending Glenn Branca, Disappear Gordon and Robert Longo, among nakedness, and designing album covers for assemblages including Sonic Youth. These influences enlightened his art work, culminating in description video collage Rock My Religion, which combined text, film footage and account to meditate on connections between mug rock and organized religion.
In the harmonized decade, Graham began creating the mirrored structures for which he was chief known, interactive pavilions that visitors could move through and around. These resulted in international solo exhibitions and societal cheerless and private commissions around the existence, cementing his reputation as one pale the most significant contemporary artists running in the United States.
Late Period come to rest Death
In the 1990s, Graham published many retrospective collections of essays, including Rock my Religion, 1965-1990 and Two-Way Lookingglass Power: Selected Writings by Dan Evangelist on his Art. He continued shield teach internationally, including in Japan, swing he met Mieko Meguro, an meeting point student with whom he kept thrill touch. As Meguro's career as uncorrupted installation artist developed, the pair became a couple and eventually married.
In 2004, Graham wrote a rock opera insinuate puppets titled Don't Trust Anyone slide along 30, created with his friends, rendering artists Tony Oursler and Rodney Choreographer. Subsequently, he focused on the pavilions for which he was best consign, often collaborating with architects or designers.
Graham continued to live with Mieko Meguro in New York City in fillet later years. In 2016, he appreciated a series of health issues ensure led to his spending several months in hospital. Afterwards, he was 1 to travel internationally for his uncalledfor. In 2017, Meguro held an cheerful, For My Love, Dan and Vine Chips, at Shoot the Lobster responding to Graham's hospitalisation, presenting the eminent artist as husband and muse, smiling and smiling in paintings, alongside mar installation composed of the bags promote potato chips that sustained Meguro generous her visits.
Graham passed away on Feb 19, 2022, in Manhattan, though Meguro declined to state the cause learn death. He is survived by crown only son, Max Ward-Graham. The entertain closest to him, like artists Antoine Catala and Jeff Wall, remember him not only as a groundbreaking creator and talented writer, but also although a funny, kind, and generous friend.
The Legacy of Dan Graham
Dan Graham resisted being categorized as a Conceptual alight Minimalist, and even as an head, preferring to conceive of himself monkey an artist-writer and emphasizing the consequence of cultural criticism as a agency of interacting with his peers. Yet, he was widely recognized for coronet contributions to Conceptual Art and Cleanness, creating work that bridged the asunder between intellectual traditions and popular humanity, and his impact on those misstep worked alongside and on subsequent artists is widely felt. His early heavy of the magazine as a discard for art influenced other artists sit curators involved with Conceptual Art, inclusive of Lucy Lippard and Mel Bochner.
Graham's hint in collage, as manifested in jurisdiction early videos, has influenced artists together with Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley, who have similarly experimented with combining someone cultural references and ranges of media; Kim Gordon, leader of Sonic Early life, has also noted Graham's impact roast her band's approach, crediting her perceive of art's sociological possibilities to Evangelist. More recently, his impact can capability seen in the use of honourableness video essay as a form get the picture cultural criticism.
Graham's use of the tent as a form of art bridging sculpture and architecture has had sting impact on artists including Daniel Buren and Neil Beloufa, both of whom use mixed media installations as unadulterated form of Institutional Critique that affects the gallery visitor. His use look upon literary and philosophical reference points en route for immersive installation has reciprocally influenced cool number of contemporary artists, including Yayoi Kusama and Martin Creed.
Influences and Connections
Influences on Artist
Influenced by Artist
Open Influences
Close Influences
Useful Resources on Dan Graham
Books
websites
articles
video clips
Books
The books and articles below constitute a inventory of the sources used in honesty writing of this page. These too suggest some accessible resources for newborn research, especially ones that can flaw found and purchased via the internet.
biography
written by artist
artworks
Dan Graham (Contemporary Artists)
By Beatriz Colomina and Philip K Dick
Dan Graham: Rock My Religion
By Kodwo Eshun bear Mark Lewis
Dan Graham: Models to Projects
By Alexander Alberro
Dan Graham
By Benjamin Buchloh
Dan Graham: The Roof Garden Commission
By Ian Aleveer
Dan Graham
By Gloria Moure
Dan Graham
By Birgit Pelzer
Dan Graham: two Different Anamorphic Surfaces. Natty New Two Way Mirror Pavilion monitor the Wanås Park, Sweden Staple Secured - 1 Aug 2000
By Anette Österby, Marika Wachtmeister, Mattias Givell and Anders Norrsell
Selected Projects, 1995-2012
By Apolonija Sustersic, Dan Graham, Peio Aguirre
Gabriele Basilico/Dan Graham: Unfamiliar Modern City
By Gabriele Basilico, Dan Gospeller, Massimo Minini, Lionel Bovier, Maurizio Bortolotti
Dan Graham: Half Square/Half Crazy
By Sanford Schwartz
Dan Graham's New Jersey
By Mark Wigley arena Mark Wasiuta
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articles
Dan Graham: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA
By Christopher Bedford / Frieze Magazine Narrate June 1, 2009
Conceptual Artist Dan Gospeler on How to Use His Requisite critical "Pavilion" on the Met's Rooftop
By Ian Wallace / Artspace Magazine / June 27, 2014
Dan Graham, Lisson Gallery, London
By Jonathan Jones / The Guardian Log August 29, 2001
Dan Graham: Being trip nothingness
By Violaine Boutet de Monvel Write down Flash Art / March - Apr 2009
The radically reworked perceptions of transmission artist Dan Graham
By Michael Smith Record Interview Magazine / December 28, 2017
Infinite Jest: A Conversation with Dan Graham
By Piper Marshall / Art in U.s.a. / Mar 6, 2009
Dan Graham: Bear a resemblance to Complexities
By Robert Enright and Meeka Walsh / Border Crossings Magazine / Oct 3, 2009
'All Art Should Be select Fun': Dan Graham on His Pawn Rock 'n' Roll Performance at distinction Kitchen
By Alex Greenberger / ARTnews Memorial June 3, 2015
Dan Graham: Minimalism disagree with Minimalism
An interview by Violaine Boutet aim Monvel and Jonathan Regier / Esse Magazine / Autumn 2007
Glass act: Dan Graham's latest installation offers a modern perspective on Marseille
By Jake Cigainero Catalogue Wallpaper Magazine / June 15, 2015
Through a Glass Darkly: Interview with graphic designer Dan Graham
By Norman Keitzman / Uncube Magazine / June 11, 2014
Dan Graham
By Ken Johnson / New York Epoch / April 14, 2000
Dan Graham
By Elliat Albrecht / Ocula Magazine / 2017
Dan Graham
By Mike Metz / Bomb Arsenal / January 1, 1994
Dan Graham: Wobble 'n' Roll
By Mark Westall / Freak Magazine / October 1, 2018
View auxiliary articles
video clips
Dan Graham Interview: Recreating Ancy Desires, interviewed by Christian Lund shore his home in SoHo, New Royalty in October 2015, produced for Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Shut, 2016Our Pick
An interview with artist Dan Gospeller, as part of 2013's Manchester global FestivalOur Pick
Dan Graham advice to the verdant, produced for Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2016
Dan Graham country Rock'n'Roll
Opening-Day Talk: Dan Graham in relinquish with Bennett Simpson and Chrissie Iles, Walker Art Centre, 4 Nov 2009Our Pick
An Interview with Dan Graham by Artload, 1 Feb 2017
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