to the paintings of Barnett Newman, in which a narrow band of pigment—a "zip"—cuts vertically across a flat field of contrasting color. Flavin’s deep regard for Newman is evident in several of his works, such as untitled (to Barnett Newman to commemorate his simple problem, red, yellow, and blue) whose title directly references some of Newman's final paintings. While Newman’s "zips" were praised for the way in which they established a new kind of pictorial space, Flavin went even further: His fluorescent lights actually bleed into the ambient space surrounding the fixture itself; the work of art, therefore, consists not merely of the fluorescent tubes, but also of the space they illuminate. (continue)
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