Fluxus Forms

Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network

Natilee Harren

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780226354927
• eBook ISBN: 9780226355085
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

"PURGE the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art. . . . Promote living art, anti-art, promote NON ART REALITY to be grasped by all peoples," writes artist George Maciunas in his Fluxus manifesto of 1963. Reacting against an elitist art world enthralled by modernist aesthetics, Fluxus encouraged playfulness, chance, irreverence, and viewer participation. The diverse collective—including George Brecht, Robert Filliou, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Benjamin Patterson, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, Ben Vautier, and Robert Watts—embraced humble objects and everyday gestures as critical means of finding freedom and excitement beyond traditional forms of art-making.

While today the Fluxus collective is recognized for its radical neo-avant-garde works of performance, publishing, and relational art and its experimental, interdisciplinary approach, it was not taken seriously in its own time. With Fluxus Forms, Natilee Harren captures the magnetic energy of Fluxus activities and collaborations that emerged at the intersections of art, music, performance, and literature. The book offers insight into the nature of art in the 1960s as it traces the international development of the collective's unique intermedia works—including event scores and Fluxbox multiples—that irreversibly expanded the boundaries of contemporary art.
 

INDEX

Page numbers in italics indicate figures.

4′33′′ (Cage), 30, 33, 48–50, 68–69, 102, 210

absolute music, 31–32

abstract expressionism, 14, 20–21, 29, 46, 109, 116, 232n33, 242n1, 244n30, plates 2–3; Fluxus responses to, 71–99; gesture painting, 21, 44, 89, 94–95; lyrical abstraction, 95. See also action painting; Motherwell, Robert; New York School; Ossorio, Alfonso; Pollock, Jackson

abstraction, 39, 43, 44, 47, 51–53, 63, 89, 92–93, 95, 116, 120, 130, 213, 222, 247n1, plates 1–3; vs. concretism / the concrete, 103, 106, 128–32; and the diagram, 51–53; and graphic notation, 53, 61. See also abstract expressionism

action painting: Kaprow on, 83. See also abstract expressionism; Pollock, Jackson; Rosenberg, Harold

Adorno, Theodor: on music as relational, 50

AG Gallery, 15–16, 88–94, 98, 127, 146, 174

Akasegawa, Gempei, 253n14

Albers, Josef, 120

allographic, 20, 29, 59, 105, 148, 163, 112, 163, 249n29; vs. autographic (Goodman), 59; Fluxus objects as, 137–43. See also autographic

Alloway, Lawrence: and The Art of Assemblage exhibition and panel discussion, 14, 133

ambiguity, 29; and Brecht, 102; and Brown, 21, 53–56, 61–62, 142; and Cage, 40–41, 56; “fatal ambiguity,” 82; and Feldman, 38; vs. indeterminacy, 53–64

anality, 157, 166; the anal stage, 158. See also asshole; body, the; holes; orality; shit

anthologies: Anthology of Chance Operations, An (Young), 9, 15, 27, 38, 67, 127, 128, 138–39; “Anthology of Misunderstandings” (Filliou/Brecht), 182; Fluxkit (1965), 98, 150–51, 160, plate 7; Fluxus 1 (1964–1965), 135, 136, 137–40, 145, 148, 160, 253n14, plate 6; Flux Year Box 2 (1967), 151, 153, 160, plate 8; Notations (1969), 67; Water Yam (Maciunas/Brecht), 9, 10, 27–28, 100, 110, 113, 129, 230n12

Anthology of Chance Operations, An (Young), 9, 15, 27, 38, 67, 127, 128, 138–39

arbitrariness: and the drip, 82; vs. fine art, 82; and work realization, 7

Arendt, Hannah, 174; on labor, work, and action, 197–200, 205

Arman: accumulations of, 200, 256n52; and the Cédille, 191, 193

Arp, Jean, 95

art: anti-, 19, 213; as an “automatic machine” (Maciunas), 18, 93–94, 131, 214, 220; “cybernated art” (Paik), 220; “idea art,” 195; imitating ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• PRELUDE   The Artwork in Flux
• ONE   Diagramming Form, from Graphic Notation to the Fluxus Event Score
• TWO   Of Drips, Diagrams, and Immanent Form: Fluxus in the Wake of Abstract Expressionist Painting
• THREE   George Brecht and the Notational Object
• FOUR   George Maciunas, Fluxboxes, and the Transitional Commodity
• FIVE   Objects Without Object: Robert Filliou and the Unworking of Fluxus
• CODA   The Fluxus Virtual, Actually
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• NOTES
• INDEX
• Plates