I just ran into the news that Dan Graham passed away. I did not know about him until today when I read about his life and the the things he constructed and what he did. It's a testament to keep looking and learning about our world. Here is a good article that talks about his efforts and results in Art News:
The works for which Graham is best known, his glass pavilions, resemble clear architectural spaces that afford audiences unusual views of the spaces surrounding them. These are made with two-way mirrored glass, which “reflect[s] the sky,” Graham said in a 2014 interview with Artspace. “But then it becomes surveillance, as well—you can see out, but you can’t see in.” One intended as an “urban park” was built atop the roof of the Dia Art Foundation in 1991, and was sited there until the space’s closure in 2004; a curvaceous sculpture related to the pavilions appeared on top of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014. Many more popped up in areas that are not quite considered art spaces—near the Arctic Circle in Norway, for example.
While within the art world Graham is known for artworks like the pavilions, he has also developed a cult following beyond it for one work in particular: Rock My Religion (1984), a 55-minute-long montage that links rock ‘n’ roll to a whole lineage of religious music that begins with the Shakers. Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore provided the soundtrack for the video, which is, in a way, Graham paying homage to the rock music that influenced him.
Graham’s storied career has been widely recognized by various institutions across the world. He appeared in four editions of Documenta, three editions of the Venice Biennale (not counting an inclusion in the Venice Architecture Biennale, a rarity for visual artists), three editions of the Whitney Biennial, and two editions of Skulptur Projekte Münster in Germany. His 2009 U.S. retrospective, “Beyond,” appeared at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Graham, who was long based in New York, claimed in a 2009 Art in America interview that he had trouble gaining recognition for his work in the city. That had not stopped a legion of contemporary artists from making the journey to his $450-a-month apartment on the Lower East Side to hear from him. He was known to enchant visitors with pithy meditations on the self-seriousness of the art scene of the ’70s and the latest comedies playing in multiplexes near him. He often seemed to take just as much pleasure in reading the writings of Guy Debord as he did in watching a gross-out comedy starring Seth Rogen.
“All art should be for fun,” he said at a screening of his work in 2015.
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