Explores the roots and fruits of this radical art movement. Here Emmett Williams turns cartoonist, in the footsteps of Lyonel Feininger, Rube Goldberg, and Ad Reinhardt. His pseudo-historical collage-drawings, digitally remastered by Ann Noel for this edition, are peopled with often-irreverent images of his real-life friends and colleagues. Williams, the oldest living member of Fluxus, assumes the role of know-it-all ringmaster in a three-ring circus that highlights the fanciful antics of the stars of Fluxus, Happenings, and Performance Art: George Maciunas, John Cage, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Joseph Beuys, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and Williams and Noel themselves. On the left-hand pages, opposite each cartoon, are documents from the author's personal archives relating some of the amusing and unexpected things that really happened in Fluxus events over the years. 140 color illustrations.
An innovative exploration of the intersection of graphic design and American art of the 1960s and 1970s This fascinating study of the role that graphic design played in American art of the 1960s and 1970s focuses on the work of George Maciunas, Ed Ruscha, and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville. Examining how each of these artists utilized typography, materiality, and other graphic design aesthetics, Benoît Buquet reveals the importance of graphic design in creating a sense of coherence within the disparate international group of Fluxus artists, an elusiveness and resistance to categorization that defined much of Ruscha's brand of Pop Art, and an open and participatory visual identity for a range of feminist art practices. Rigorous and compelling scholarship and a copious illustration program that presents insightful juxtapositions of objects--some of which have never been discussed before--combine to shed new light on a period of abundant creativity and cultural transition in American art and the intimate, though often overlooked, entwinement between art and graphic design.
Part I. Three histories : Developing a fluxable forum: Early performance & publishing / Owen Smith -- Fluxus, fluxion, flushoe: the 1970's / Simon Anderson -- Fluxus fortuna / Hannah Higgins -- Part II. Theories of Fluxus: Boredom and oblivion / Ina Blon -- Zen vaudeville: a medi(t)ation in the margins of Fluxus / David T. Doris -- Fluxus as a laboratory / Craig Saper -- Part III. Critical and historical perspectives: Fluxus history and trans-history: competing strategies for empowerment / Estera Milman -- Historical design and social purpose: a note on the relationship of Fluxus to modernism / Stephen C. Foster -- A spirit of large goals: fluxus, dada and postmodern cultural theory at two speeds -- Part IV. Three Fluxus voices : Transcript of the videotaped Interview with George Maciunas -- Selections from an interview with Billie Maciunas / Susan L. Jarosi -- Maybe Fluxus (a para-interrogative guide for the neoteric transmuter, tinder, tinker and totalist) / Larry Miller -- Part V. Two Fluxus theories : Fluxus : theory and reception / Dick Higgins -- Fluxus and company / Ken Friedman -- Part. VI-- Documents of Fluxus : Fluxus chronology : key moments and events -- A list of selected Fluxus art works and related primary source materials -- A list of selected Fluxus sources and related secondary sources.
We have lost touch with nature, rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside it. This will in time be over and then what? What have we learned?... The only real things in life are food and love, in that order, just like [for] our little dog Ruby... and the source of art is love. I love life. DAVID HOCKNEY ***PRE-ORDER NOW*** Praise for David Hockney and Martin Gayford's previous book, A History of Pictures: 'I won't read a more interesting book all year ... utterly fascinating' AN Wilson, Sunday Times 'A magic flight of a book... It's a measure of Hockney's vividness of perception that he can always put a cap on Gayford's knowledge ... fabulous' Clive James, Guardian Elegant and often surprising Hockney flags up a topic and Gayford gives the critical armature: it makes for a refreshing double act Michael Prodgers Books of the Year, Sunday Times 'An eloquent conversational testimony to the vividness of life lived through intelligent looking. You will see Caravaggio and Citizen Kane with fresh eyes' Daily Telegraph '[Hockney] asks big questions about the nature of picture-making and the relationship between painters and photography in a way that no other contemporary artist seems to do ... enormously good-humoured and entertaining ... On almost every page, there is an interesting provocation' Andrew Marr, New Statesman On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquillity for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay. So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year before, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art. Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms arts capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockneys new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others. We see how Hockney is propelled ever forward by his infectious enthusiasms and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he has been in the public eye for sixty years, yet remains entirely unconcerned by the view of critics or even history. He is utterly absorbed by his four acres of northern France and by the themes that have fascinated him for decades: light, colour, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us, not only about how to see... but about how to live.
Fluxus was an art movement of the 1960s and 70s that set out to abolish the canonized art idioms of the day. Pioneers of Conceptual Art and Minimalism, the Fluxus artists were known for their environments, performance art and mass-producible objects. This book is a study of the Fluxus movement.
“What is a good mail day?” A good mail day is a day when, instead of just bills, catalogs, and advertisements, your postal carrier delivers artful, beautiful, personal mail from friends and acquaintances all over the world. Mail art is a collaborative art form with a long and fascinating history populated by famous artists as well as everyday practitioners. The term “mail art” refers to pieces of art sent through the mail rather than displayed or sold in traditional venues. Mail artists often use inexpensive and recycled materials including postcards, collage, rubber stamps, and photocopied images. Mail art is a truly international activity and a fun way to connect with people in every corner of the globe. Readers will learn to create decorated and illustrated envelopes, faux postage and artistamps, find penpals, make a mail art kit, and much more!
Denes began her compilation of data for this major work in 1972. Using dust as a metaphor and a connecting thread to facts and phenomena, she studies the human mind, our ethical values, standards of living, and survival, presenting haunting images of dust particles from outer space, such as the death of a star, distant and large objects in the universe, as well as earthly dust, including human dust, hallucinogens, poisons, chemicals, and nuclear waste. Book of Dust is a glance at the history and the future of the universe, from its violent birth to the formation of stars, the silent demise of galaxies, and the death of matter. From cosmic dust to human dust, from molecules to intelligence, this work is a cross-section of existence.
Dick Higgins and his Something Else Press epitomized the riotous art of the '60s There are few art-world figures as influential--and as little known--as Dick Higgins (1938-98), cofounder of Fluxus, "polyartist," poet, scholar, theorist, composer, performer and, not least, the publisher of the legendary Something Else Press. In 1965 he restored the term "intermedia" to the English language, giving it new dimension to recognize the dissolution of boundaries between traditional modes of art-making and the open field for new forms that cannot be compartmentalized. His own contributions to intermedia are many--as a participant and instigator of happenings, as writer and composer straddling traditional and vanguard forms, among others--but it was Something Else Press (1963-74) that redefined how "the book" could inhabit that energized, in-between space. Something Else Press was as much a critical statement and radical experiment as it was a collection of books by some of the most luminary artists and writers of the 20th century: Gertrude Stein, John Cage, Ray Johnson, Dieter Roth, Bern Porter, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Emmett Williams, Robert Filliou, and George Brecht, among many others. Along with his Great Bear Pamphlet series and the Something Else newsletter, Higgins exploited and subverted conventional book production and marketing strategies to get unconventional and avant-garde works into the hands of new and often unsuspecting readers. Edited by Granary Books publisher Steve Clay and Fluxus artist Ken Friedman, this judiciously curated and indispensable compendium of essays, theoretical writings and narrative prose dives deep into the ever-influential ideas that Higgins explored in theory and practice. Clay and Friedman have chosen works that illuminate Higgins' voracious intellectual appetite, encyclopedic body of knowledge and playful yet rigorous experimentation in a selection that includes many writings long out of print or difficult to find.
