Remembering the mind-bending art of Dan Graham (1942–2022)
American artist and writer Dan Graham, whose hybrid output warped perceptions and defied genre has died in New York aged 79
Pioneering American visual artist, writer and curator Dan Graham has died in New York City aged 79. Through cognitive and visual experiences, his art occupied an in-between, fluid and hybrid space, cloaking complex theories in a veil of simplicity.
Throughout his 50-year career, Graham moved seamlessly between photography, architecture, sculpture, filmmaking and live performance, alongside critical and speculative writing that spanned everything from rock music reviews to astrology and art theory essays. He was best known for his ‘pavilions’ – hybrid structures blending sculpture and architecture – theatres of perception that toyed with illusion and geometry, casting viewers as both spectators and protagonists.
Considered one of the pioneers of conceptual art (though a term he recently disavowed) he broke rules, re-wrote conventions and imagined an art beyond the white-walled, cubic confines of the gallery.
Graham began his career in art as a gallery director at New York’s John Daniels Gallery, exhibiting the work of minimalist legends such as Carl André, Donald Judd, Robert Smithson, Dan Flavin and Sol LeWitt (including the latter’s first solo gallery show).
In 1965, Graham’s attention shifted to his own conceptual and post-conceptual art ideas. His initial breakthrough work was Homes for America (1966–67), a magazine-style photograph-text composition based on a cheap 1960s suburban housing development in New Jersey. Graham used conceptual satire to portray these characterless housing grids – built on a promise of desirability and positive social reform – as alienating and soulless variations on a theme of monotony.
Though working in a minimalist tradition, Homes for America critiqued a certain kind of minimalism, one where repetition was never interrupted, and mass production rendered craftsmanship and design obsolete. As Graham told the Brooklyn Rail in a 2012 interview: ‘There was this whole idea of defeating monetary value in the air in the ’60s, so my idea was to put things in magazine pages where they’d be disposable with no value. And that was a hybrid also because the work was a combination of art criticism and essay: magazine page as an artwork.’
In the 1970s, Graham’s focus turned to the architectural installations for which he is best known. These ‘pavilions’, geometrically-configured structures involving two-way mirrors, steel and glass, served as environmental ‘punctuation marks’, diversions from the expected rhythm of urban life, a moment of pause, and crucially, an invitation for viewers to spectate but also inhabit.
These walk-in structures create feelings of instability on solid ground. They watch, reflect and ensnare those who enter in a disorientating combination of self-reflection, self-awareness, self-absorption. Viewers, or participants, find their bodies warped, dislocated, or merged with other bodies – trippy, unsettling and sense-stretching, they’re about observing and being observed.
Holding a mirror up to modernity, Graham’s practice explored consumerism, the philosophy of surveillance and the psychology of space. His legacy is an art that made you see yourself, and your surroundings, a little differently.
Notable pavilion works include Public Space/Two Audiences (created for the 1976 Venice Biennale), Two Way Mirror with Hedge Labyrinth (1989), and Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout (2014) created on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with landscape architect Günther Vogt.
Graham’s key exhibitions included solo shows at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin(2006), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA (2009); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2014). He also participated in dOCUMENTA 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10 (1972, 1977, 1982, 1992, 1997) and showed work at the Venice Biennale (1976, 2003, 2005).
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox
Harriet Lloyd-Smith was the Arts Editor of Wallpaper*, responsible for the art pages across digital and print, including profiles, exhibition reviews, and contemporary art collaborations. She started at Wallpaper* in 2017 and has written for leading contemporary art publications, auction houses and arts charities, and lectured on review writing and art journalism. When she’s not writing about art, she’s making her own.
-
Spend the night in Mathieu Lehanneur’s Musée D’Orsay Airbnb in Paris
Mathieu Lehanneur, designer of the Paris Olympic torch, turns Musée D‘Orsay’s clock room into an Airbnb, which comes with a chance to watch the Olympic opening ceremony
By Bridget Downing Published
-
Has Loro Piana made the world’s most luxurious denim?
Loro Piana’s ‘Denim Silk’ is crafted from a mix of denim and silk in a collaboration between artisans in Italy and Japan, taking a day to produce just 50 metres
By Jack Moss Published
-
First look at Pharrell Williams and Tiffany & Co’s punkish titanium and gold jewellery
Pharrell Williams and Tiffany & Co reveal first jewellery collaboration, ‘Tiffany Titan’, featuring 19 yellow gold and titanium pieces
By Hannah Silver Published
-
An avant-garde Korean art movement resurfaces in LA
LA's Hammer Museum gets its teeth into avant-garde Korean art with ‘Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s’
By Anne Soward Published
-
The New York art exhibitions to see now
From MoMA to the smaller spaces, here are the best New York art exhibitions to catch in May 2024.
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Surreal, uncanny, seductive: step into Graham Little’s world
Scottish artist Graham Little presents his first US retrospective at The FLAG Art Foundation in New York
By Hannah Silver Published
-
The cosmos meets art history in Vivian Greven’s New York exhibition
Vivian Greven’s ‘When the Sun Hits the Moon’, at Perrotin in New York City, is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the USA
By Emily McDermott Published
-
The Met’s ‘The Real Thing: Unpacking Product Photography’ dissects the avant-garde in early advertising
A new exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York explores the role of product photography and advertising in shaping the visual language of modernism
By Zoe Whitfield Published
-
Remembering Richard Serra (1938-2024), American art’s man of steel
American artist Richard Serra, whose vast sculptures transformed landscapes around the world, has died aged 85
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Detroit Institute of Arts celebrates Black cinema
‘Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971’ at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) brings lost or forgotten films, filmmakers and performers to a contemporary audience
By Anne Soward Published
-
BLUM marks 30 years of Japanese contemporary art in America
BLUM will take ‘Thirty Years: Written with a Splash of Blood’ to its New York space in September 2024, continuing its celebration of Japanese contemporary art in America
By Timothy Anscombe-Bell Published