By employing generic mass-produced light fixtures in his works, Dan Flavin denies his art any transcendental significance while simultaneously denying those same light fixtures their simple utilitarian function by calling them art. His simplified visual vocabulary is related to the work of contemporaries such as Donald Judd and Carl Andre, who have been labeled Minimalist artists for their reduction of formal devices and their emphasis on serial and rational rather than gestural forms. In Flavin's case light, rather than form, activates the space.