View of Dan Flavin, to Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, master potters, 2017. From left: untitled (to Lucie Rie, master potter) 1w, 1990; untitled (to Lucie Rie, master potter) 1fff, 1990. Photo: Stefan Altenburger. © Stephen Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Vito Schnabel Gallery
Handicraft is not something Dan Flavin valued in his own work, so it might seem a little odd that with his series “untitled (to Lucie Rie, master potter)” and “untitled (to Hans Coper, master potter),” both 1990, he paid homage to two ceramists. But Austrian-born Lucie Rie (1902–1995) and her German-born protégé Hans Coper (1920–1981) were not just two more figures among the eclectic group of artists, friends, and family to whom Flavin dedicated his works. In fact, he had collected their pots, which were included alongside his fluorescent light installations in this exhibition, framed as a group show of three key figures of the postwar avant-garde.