Dan Graham

Dan Graham (March 31, 1942 – February 19, 2022) was an American visual artist, writer, and curator in the writer-artist tradition. 

Demonstrating his versatility as a post-conceptual artist, Graham operated within the realms of Minimalism and Conceptual Art, exploring diverse mediums. His artistic repertoire encompassed performance art, installations, video, sculpture, and photography.

Biography of Dan Graham

Dan Graham was born in Urbana, Illinois. When he was three years old, Graham relocated with his family from Illinois to Winfield Township, New Jersey, and later settled in the nearby town of Westfield. Despite not pursuing formal education after high school, Graham embarked on a path of self-education.

In 1964, at the age of 22, Dan Graham began his artistic journey by establishing the John Daniels Gallery in New York City. He worked there until 1965 when he started creating his own conceptual pieces. 

Throughout his career, Graham consistently grounded his work in conceptual or post-conceptual art practice. In his early works, he experimented with photographs and numerological sequences, often printed in magazines, such as "Figurative" (1965) and "Schema" (1966). One of his breakthrough pieces was a series of magazine-style photographs, "Homes for America" (1966–67). 

From the late 1960s to the late 1970s, Graham underwent a significant artistic shift, transitioning towards a predominantly performance-based practice. He incorporated film and the emerging medium of video into his systematic explorations of cybernetics, phenomenology, and embodiment. In 1969, the artist created his first film, "Sunset to Sunrise," in which the camera moved in the opposite direction of the sun, subverting the conventional progression of time.

From the 1980s onward, Graham devoted himself to the ongoing series of standalone sculptural objects known as pavilions. Composed of steel and glass, they created distinct spaces that disoriented viewers from their familiar surroundings, challenging their understanding of space. These pavilions propelled Graham's popularity and led to commissioned works across the globe. 

Graham also produced a notable body of writing. He worked as an art critic, writing articles about fellow artists, art, architecture, video, and rock music. His works are collected in several catalogs and books, such as "Dan Graham Beyond" (MIT Press 2011), "Rock My Religion. Writings and Projects 1965–1990," edited by Brian Wallis, and "Two Way Mirror Power: Selected Writings by Dan Graham on His Art."

Dan Graham's art style

Daniel Graham's art style can be characterized as a multidisciplinary and conceptually-driven approach, incorporating elements of Minimalism, Conceptual Art, and Post-Conceptual Art practices while exploring the intersection of art, architecture, perception, and critical theory. His prodigious career, spanning over 50 years, was marked by his unique ability to bring humor, anthropology, and psychoanalytic theory together in his artistic endeavors. 

Graham was best known for creating pavilions for gardens and urban contexts, using architectural vocabulary to explore how our environment structures our gaze. He incorporated two-way mirrors in his pavilions, which allowed light to enter the structure while protecting the privacy of those inside. This type of glass also emphasized the concept of the immediate past, a key idea in Graham's work that he borrowed from Walter Benjamin and explored through his video performances.