Research Catalog

Title

Fluxus forms : scores, multiples, and the eternal network / Natilee Harren.

Author

Harren, Natilee

Publication

• Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2020.
• ©2020

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

278 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color); 26 cm

Summary

• "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"--
• "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."--book jacket.

Subjects

• Art, Modern
• New York, NY
• Fluxus > Kunst
• Avant-garde (Music)
• Art, Modern > 20th century
• Fluxus (Group of artists)
• 1900-1999
• ART / General

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Prelude: the artwork in Flux -- Diagramming form, from graphic notation to the Fluxus event score -- Of drips, diagrams, and immanent form: Fluxus in the wake of abstract expressionist painting -- George Brecht and the notational object -- George Maciunas, Fluxboxes, and the transitional commodity -- Objects without object: Robert Filliou and the unworking of Fluxus -- Coda: The Fluxus virtual, actually.

ISBN

• 9780226354927
• 022635492X
• 9780226355085 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2019027342

OCLC

• on1109442460
• SCSB-9712411

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library