Fluxus Forms : Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network

Natilee Harren

ISBN 10: 022635492X / ISBN 13: 9780226354927

Published by University Of Chicago Press Mär 2020, 2020

About this Item

Neuware - 'A history of the understudied but highly inventive Fluxus collective founded in NYC in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Fluxus was an unruly, endlessly shifting gang of performers, conceptual writers, musicians, and installation artists who wanted to integrate life into art using found and ordinary objects and processes (like cooking and shaving). Fluxus first arose in the United States under the leadership of George Maciunas and quickly spread to Europe. Artists from Claus Oldenberg to Allan Kaprow to Dick Higgins to Allison Knowles to Joseph Beuys to Gerhard Richter to Nam June Paik to Yoko Ono to Robert Filliou all participated in Fluxus at some point. Unlike other books about Fluxus, this one explores not just the movement itself but also how it figures the transition from modernism to postmodernism, and the historical origins of experimental art practices of the present'.

Seller Inventory # 9780226354927

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Fluxus Forms : Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press Mär 2020
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022635492X
• ISBN 13: 9780226354927
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 262W x 190H x 25D millimeters 262 millimeters width by 190 millimeters height by 25 millimeters depth
• Weight: 913 grams

About this title

Synopsis

“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.
 

About the Author

Natilee Harren is assistant professor of modern and contemporary art history at the University of Houston and author of Karl Haendel: Knight’s Heritage.