26 Facts About Dan Graham

1.

Daniel Graham was an American visual artist, writer, and curator in the writer-artist tradition.

2.

Dan Graham's early magazine-based art predates, but is often associated with, conceptual art.

3.

Dan Graham was born in Urbana, Illinois, the son of a chemist and an educational psychologist.

4.

When he was 3, Graham moved from Illinois to Winfield Township, New Jersey, and then to nearby Westfield.

5.

Dan Graham had no formal education after high school and was self-educated.

6.

Dan Graham worked there until 1965, when he started creating his own conceptual pieces.

7.

When making his own work, Dan Graham proved himself to be a wide-ranging post-conceptual artist who worked at the intersection of minimalism and conceptual art.

8.

Dan Graham's work consisted of performance art, installations, video, sculpture, and photography.

9.

Dan Graham's work was always firmly based within conceptual art or post-conceptual art practice.

10.

Dan Graham's early breakthrough-work however was a series of magazine-style photographs with text, Homes for America, which counterpoints the monotonous and alienating effect of 1960's housing developments with their supposed desirability and the physical-geometry of a printed article.

11.

In Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer's publication Pep Talk in 2009, Dan Graham gave "Artists' and Architects' Work That Influenced Me" : Michael Asher, Larry Bell, Flavin, Itsuko Hasegawa, LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Mangold, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Kazuo Shinohara, Michael Snow, Mies van der Rohe, and Robert Venturi.

12.

Dan Graham exhibited a predominantly minimalist aesthetic in his earlier photographs and prints.

13.

In 1965 Dan Graham began shooting color photographs for his series Homes For America.

14.

Dan Graham produced a number of videos that documented his performance works, such as the 1972 Past Future Split Attention, in which the conversation of two acquaintances becomes a cacophony of simultaneous speech and interruption.

15.

Dan Graham incorporated video into installations, where he created environments in which video technology is used to alter the viewer's own bodily experience.

16.

Lastly, Dan Graham produced a number of video documentaries, such as Rock My Religion from and Minor Threat.

17.

Dan Graham observed the changes in beliefs and superstitions in the Shaker religion since the 18th century, and related them to the development of rock culture.

18.

Some of Dan Graham's artworks are said to blur the line between sculpture and architecture.

19.

Dan Graham's popularity grew after he started his walk-in pavilions and he received commissions all over the world.

20.

Dan Graham's pavilions are steel and glass sculptures which create a different space which disorients the viewer from his or her usual surroundings or knowledge of space.

21.

In 1981, Dan Graham started work on a decade long project in New York City.

22.

Dan Graham worked on the piece in collaboration with architects Mojdeh Baratloo and Clifton Balch.

23.

In 2014, a temporary installation by Dan Graham called Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout was created on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with the Swiss landscape architect Gunther Vogt.

24.

Dan Graham worked as an art critic, writing revealing articles about fellow artists, art, architecture, video, and rock music.

25.

Dan Graham died in New York City on February 19,2022, at the age of 79.

26.

Dan Graham's work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, documentas V, VI, VII, IX and X, and at Skulptur Projekte Munster '87 and '97.