Fluxus Totally Explained

Everything about Fluxus totally explained

Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in visual art and music as well as literature, urban planning, architecture, and design. Fluxus is often described as intermedia, a term coined by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins in a famous 1966 essay.

History of Fluxus

Early Fluxus

The origins of Fluxus lie in many of the concepts explored by composer John Cage in his experimental music of the 1950s. Cage explored notions of chance in art, through works such as 4' 33", which influenced Lithuanian-born artist George Maciunas. Maciunas (1931–1978) organized the first Fluxus event in 1961 at the AG Gallery in New York City and the first Fluxus festivals in Europe in 1962. Also contributing to the randomness of events was the integration of audience members into the performances, realizing Duchamp's notion of the viewer completing the art work.

Fluxus is intermedia. Fluxus creators like to see what happens when different media intersect. They use found and everyday objects, sounds, images, and texts to create new combinations of objects, sounds, images, and texts.

Fluxus works are simple. The art is small, the texts are short, and the performances are brief.

Fluxus is fun. Humour has always been an important element in Fluxus.

Fluxus artists

Fluxus artists shared several characteristics including wit and "childlikeness", though they lacked a consistent identity as an artistic community. This vague self-identification allowed the group to integrate a varied group of artists, including a high number of women. The possibility that Fluxus had the most female members of any Western art group up to that point in history is particularly significant considering that Fluxus came on the heels of the white male-dominated abstract expressionism movement.
Many artists, writers, and composers have been associated with Fluxus over the years, including:

Ay-O

La Monte Young

Scholars, critics, and curators associated with Fluxus

Kristine Stiles

Major collections and archives

Alternative Traditions in Contemporary Art, University Library and University Art Museum, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA

Archiv Sohm, Stadtsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

Archivio Conz, Verona, Italy

Artpool, Budapest, Hungary

Emily Harvey Foundation, New York, New York, and Venice, Italy

David Mayor/Fluxshoe/Beau Geste Press papers, Tate Gallery Archive, Tate Britain, London, England http://archive.tate.org.uk/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqServer=tb-calm&dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqPos=8&dsqSearch=(UserWrapped5='Mayor')

Fluxus Collection, Ken Friedman papers, Tate Gallery Archive, Tate Britain, London, England

Fluxus Collection, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Franklin Furnace Archive, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA

George Maciunas Memorial Collection, The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA

Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Foundation, Detroit, Michigan, and New York, New York, USA

Jean Brown Archive, Getty Center for the History of the Arts and Humanities, Los Angeles, California, USA

TVF www.artvideo.tv The Endless Story of FLUXUS vol. 1 - 27 and more to come.Gent.Belgium

Legacy

The work of fluxus has evolved into new art forms such as...

Selected bibliography

Block, René, ed. 1962 Wiesbaden Fluxus 1982. Wiesbaden (BRD): Harlekin Art; Wiesbaden: Museum Wiesbaden and Nassauischer Kunstverein; Kassel: Neue Galerie der Staatliche, 1982.

Friedman, Ken, ed. The Fluxus Reader. Chicester, West Sussex and New York: Academy Editions, 1998.

Gray, John. Action Art. A Bibliography of Artists’ Performance from Futurism to Fluxus and Beyond. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1993.

Hansen, Al, and Hansen, Beck. Playing with Matches. RAM USA, 1998

Held, John Jr. Mail Art: an Annotated Bibliography. Metuchen, New Jersey and London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1991.

Hendricks, Geoffrey, ed. Critical Mass, Happenings, Fluxus, performance, intermedia and Rutgers University 1958–1972. Mason Gross Art Galleries, Rutgers, and Mead Art Gallery, Amherst, 2003.

Hendricks, Jon. Fluxus Codex. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1989.

Jon Hendricks, ed. Fluxus, etc.: The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection. Bloomfield Hills, Michigan: Cranbrook Museum of Art, 1982.

Higgins, Hannah. Fluxus Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Kellein, Thomas. Fluxus. London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995.

Milman, Estera, ed. Fluxus: A Conceptual Country, [Visible Language, vol. 26, nos. 1/2] Providence: Rhode Island School of Design, 1992.

Moren, Lisa. Intermedia. Baltimore, Maryland: University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 2003.

Paull, Silke and Hervé Würz, eds. How we met or a microdemystification. Saarbrücken-Dudweiler (Germany) 1977, Engl.-German, AQ 16, Incl. a bibliography by Hanns Sohm.

Phillpot, Clive, and Jon Hendricks, eds. Fluxus: Selections from the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1988.

Saper, Craig J. Networked Art. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.

Schmidt-Burkhardt, Astrit. Maciunas’ Learning Machine from Art History to a Chronology of Fluxus. Detroit, Michigan: Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, 2005.

Smith, Owen, Fluxus: The History of an Attitude. San Diego State University Press, San Diego, California, 1998.

Williams, Emmett and Ann Noel, editors. Mr. Fluxus: A Collective Portrait of George Maciunas 1931–1978. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997.Further Information

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