Dan Graham

(American, 1942–2022)

Dan Graham was an American artist and curator best known for his integral role in beginnings of Conceptual Art during the 1960s. Incorporating writing, photography, and performance, Graham employs the aesthetics of music magazines, suburban houses, corporate offices, and malls, as a means to introduce subversive ideas into people’s daily lives. “Homes for America was done intuitively, but I was also interested in the relationship between serial music and Minimal Art. At the time, Esquire magazine was publishing sociological exposes like David Riesman’s, The Lonely Crowd. They used photographers in the school of Walker Evans, photographers who were showing vernacular workers’ housing, suburban housing, but usually from a humanistic negative viewpoint,” he explained of his work. “I wanted to keep all of those meanings but empty out the pejorative expressionistic meanings. On the other hand, I didn’t want to go as far as minimal. I wanted to show that minimal was related to a real social situation that could be documented.” Born on March 31, 1942 in Urbana, IL, he was raised in New Jersey, though he never attended college he educated himself in anthropology, French literature, and other subjects. His time as a music critic for magazines, especially rock music, led Graham to produce works that embody a spirit of rebellion. He later worked as the director of the briefly existent gallery, John Daniels Gallery, where he put on Sol LeWitt’s first solo show as well as shows of Robert Smithson, Dan Flavin, and Donald Judd. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others. Graham passed away on Saturday February 19, 2022 at age 79 in New York.