Fluxus art movement or simply Fluxus, started as a loosely defined group of artists, musicians and poets who had nothing more in common than a vision of life integrated in art, and art as the living of a life. More than 50 artists were associated with the art movement, creating music and anti-music, art that was not adherent to ‘museum defined standards’ and poems that were not traditional. This movement caused social and economic change in the society in the 1960’s (when it was first started) and had effects whose fruits we reap even today. This movement can thus be defined as ‘avant-garde’ or the first one of it’s types. The movement started with a group of artists who had met in John Cage’s class, who then created the New York Audio Visual Group (Higgins 2002). The idea was simple. Live life as art, and make art into life, morph the boundary between the two. This entailed everyone, and not only the elite artists creating art, and everyone displaying pieces or art, not just museums. This anti-institutionalism became a central feature of the movement. The movement was named by George Maciunas. Fluxus means “the flow”. The art theory and philosophy of Fluxus is to do, to enjoy the moment and let circumstances and momentary stimulations take charge of the art. Therefore, the artists does not envision what the final art should look like or be like. The artist concentrates on the now and goes in the flow, to create a work of art.
In this paper, I am going to discuss how this movement changed the way society perceives art, opened up the gates of artistic society to each and every humble artist out there, and increased the circle of art connoisseurs to everyone including the uneducated. This paper will discuss the works of some of the most notable artists of the movement, their works and the effect they had on the movement and the society at large.
George Maciunas was the primary founder and coordinator of the Fluxus movement. His parents were first generation immigrants to the United States, where they lived in Long Island, New York. His education’s main focus was Art history and even after completing his education in 1960’s, he still remained interested and embarked on a project to list down all the art movements in history. His idea was to bring the unnamed masses that are creative in their everyday endeavours and who go unnoticed. It was to change the label of art as it then applied (only the elite art, for which the museums decided if it was art and what was its value) and award the title of artists to everyone who posses the life attitude of art not just the elite “artists” whose art gets displayed at fancy galleries and sold at high ended auctions. Thus the new definition of art according to Fluxus, had to be more fluid.
Two of the most famous works of Maciunas are USA Surpasses all the Genocide Records! (1966) And The Flux smile machine (1970). The first one namely USA Surpasses all the Genocide Records! Is made in the likeness of an American flag with state stars replaced by skull and crossbones (symbolising death) and the red stripes replaced by red text that read the numbers (percentages) of people killed during any genocide. The art states that USA has killed more people through genocide than all other dictators of the world. Last line gives the reader an address where they can get the details of the calculations. Second work- the flux smile machine shows a spring machine that forces the wearers face to look like he/she were smiling. It seems like a sarcastic comment against imperialism. Thus one can observe that day to day objects have been taken and combined to form a meaningful representation. This is what fluxus stood for. This is what gave the power of creativity to ordinary people to be artsy in their daily lives. According to me, this was the point in history that made things like ‘youtube’ successful today. It is because people at large felt comfortable making their own art and owning their talent, that today we see so many internet sensations that have talent but were previously undiscovered. May be 1960s movement sowed the seeds for individual expression at a mass scale.
Another important artist influenced and shaped by the fluxus movement is Alison Knowles. Alison Knowles is a performance artist and paper and print artist. Her performances are however not run of the mill music show or comedy show. They are deep rooted in the fluxus philosophy and include a musical combination of doing some mundane activity, while also entertaining. Her famous and most repeated performance is Make a salad (2011). Here, Knowles makes a salad in full flair while working to a musical beat. Then she also serves this salad to the audience. Her performances always involve ordinary tasks, but they always are always result oriented. A similar show is The identical Lunch. Here the people involved have to assemble a lunch which is similar to a lunch that Knowles used to have in Chelsea in her earlier days.
This novel look at the mundane activities of everyday life is what keeps us alive in true sense. This angle to view art is not in everyone’s eye to behold. We need to be guided to this different way of doing things and enjoying the fruits of our everyday labor by being a little more creative about how we do it. It shows that even a housewife’s work can be a piece of art. This knack of using everyday objects and making it into a performance elevates, the way people view some works (which they previously used to look down upon). This work probably was when people started looking to cafeterias as a place of expression of art rather than just a place where you can go and have a quick lunch. According to me, this act of fluxus movement might have blurred the boundary between everyday routine life and art completely. This has shown us that art is life. If we want, we can do everything as if we were building a masterpiece. Even a meal assembled carefully can be a work of art. The performances are very deep in meaning and leave a lot of philosophical angles to be discovered. According to Knowles, they all hide in plain sight in the daily life. But we only see it, if she puts it on a stage. To take the philosophy of life is art, she involves her family members in the shows too. In the 2011 San francisco show, she and her daughter performed the -Make a Salad side by side.
John Cage as a composer and a light bearer in the field of chance controlled music, is a very important artist who is associated with Fluxus movement. He was a composer, writer and musician, who changed the definition of music. His theory of creating art, was not to create art or music to improve the aesthetics of our existence (by creating sounds that are more melodious than the one’s that are produced naturally) or to point out a flaw in the creation. His art was aimed at pausing and listening to the sounds that are naturally created in the process of living our daily lives. To him, this was music too. Music did not have to be specially created and enjoyed only at the opera. It should be looked for in daily life and the realisation should dawn, that life is art. We create music as we walk, music is created when we drink water or do anything that produces sound. It’s all melody, but the appreciation comes to us, only when a master musician like Cage points out the subtle to us, that is otherwise lost to us when we are busy solving problems, when we should be listening to life’s music to destress.
Cage’s one of the most famous compositions is ‘4”33’ (1952). In this work, musicians, according to their allocated part, come to the stage, but do not play any instrument or create any deliberate music. The whole performance is to notice the symphony that writes itself in the process of everything going on, on the stage. Cage wants to show us the natural rhyme of existence and how making anything which pretends to be more artistic than the natural is pure pretension. He was also known for modifying the sounds of his piano by placing objects between or on keys. While he was studying asian cultures, he came across aleatoric music or chance controlled music (Lejeunne 2012). He would go on to make many compositions of such a nature throughout his life. He once said, that music had to be purposeless. It had to one’s awakening to life rather than an attempt to improve the aesthetics of existence as we think best. The idea still seems to be new and revolutionary after all these years from when it was first introduced.
The next important artist on the list to influence fluxus and get inspired by it in turn is Yoko Ono. She is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer and songwriter. After she moved from Japan to New York USA, she got involved in the downtown art scene in the 1960’s. Her art, from the early stage had a cause. She is a social activist and that shows in most of her works.
One of her works, the Cut piece (Munroe 2000), is where she comes to stage, dressed and kneeling with a scissor in front of her. She then invites the public to cut her clothing and thus confront the issues of gender equality through first hand experience of harming and being harmed in a physical way. Where other artist’s work makes one appreciate the beauty of life, Ono’s work makes one think about specific issues in life and helps us confront it on stage. This type of art that involves the beholder in the first person becomes learning. Sometimes we learn through appreciation, but sometimes, appreciation only comes through experiencing first hand. Ono has also made short films (16 to be exact). She has written an instructional book called the Grapefruit, that gives specific instructions to the reader to follow in certain situations. Another one of her projects is a wish tree. Here a tree that is native to the location of the exhibition is installed. Then people are asked to write their wishes on a piece of paper and they have to tie it to a branch of the tree. When completed, the tree is now full of wishes. Ono has also had an active singing career with her producing hits even at the age of 76.
Another important fluxus artist is Ben Vautier. He is a french artist based out of run. He also like other fluxus artists got inspired by the fluxus masters like Cage and joined the movement. He is an active mail artists with paintings made out of written alphabets and sentences. One of his famous photographs shows him holding a cactus in one hand and a sign in another that says that he would like to be like the prickly thorny cactus that is lodged in the rear of the high art. This is clearly an outrage towards the elitists and a call for more inclusive art society (Ben Dieu 1963).
Most of Vautier’s works are writings. Some of them also have pictures to make a point. This kind of art was unusual in the 1960’s European art circles. It was considered just writing. But the thought that goes behind writing less and conveying more meaning is an art in itself. It was recognised as art and a legitimate means of expression only after the fluxus movement after which bold print and painting of letters got its due recognition as art.
One of his paintings reads “Le style ces’t moi” (1972), which translates to this is my style. This type of assertion though art of an art form would have been unprecedented. Another one of his art pieces says follow no instructions. This seems to be a boost to people who like to have individual expression and do not like to adhere to the norm. Innovation comes only through the non-instruction followers.
This works may have been the fore founder though of the whole rebel culture that exist today, where people try be their own person. This individualism may have been looked down upon in the 1960’s but through the efforts of artists such as Vautier, the practice of independent thought and individual expression is now very valued and in vogue. It is seldom that we realise the efforts and the rebellion of others that might have gone into making this world as it is today. The culture of independent thought and innovation has given us google and microsoft, ola and lululemons. If there was no thought to the unobvious and outliers would not have been flashy and cool, then our world would have been full of people adhering to the norms and living the routine without ever realising what bursts of artistic energy is contained within all of us. Thus this aspect of fluxus movement might have changed the world more than we realise and more than we can fully appreciate.
Shigeko kubota is a Japanese video artist who also became close to the fluxus movement by living in New York and being in the same circles as Cage and other fluxus artists. She was the first artist to use a video with other installation art pieces to work as one single piece and convey the message. She installed video camera in the sculptures that played footage that she had shot. This was a different form of art. Some of Kubota’s works might be feminist themed, but she never accepted the title of being a feminist as she was not sure what more other then her work she could bring at the table.
Her installation- the beehive was a famous ‘happening’. In the artwork, Kubota threw in letters that were supposed to be love letters and then covered them with a white sheet. Then they were labeled according to her instructions as first love, second love (Smith 1991). This was supposed to represent the complex love lives that some people have and then the emotional complexities become beautiful hives. Only few people can tuck in every single love ripple into an organised hive and then live their lives like they would otherwise. This clarity of mind and emotional maturity might be an art in itself, which then got displayed very masterfully in an art gallery by Kubota.
Any of the ‘happenings’ would really be a good lesson for our everyday lives. Any lover or person with such similar issues can take inspiration from Kubota’s work. This applicability of art to the daily living was what the world of art was missing before fluxus. Now that everything could be displayed and appreciated as art, our lives became showcases. They became the canvases that we can finish beautifully or ruin. This approach to life was missing. Though fluxus is not very well organised, but the world would miss out on more such issues if such artists do not bring it to attention.
Marina Abramovic is a Serbian performance artist who is based out of New York. She explores relationship between the audience and the performer. Her idea is that the human body has limitations, but the human mind is capable of much more. She also says that when the body is ready for a performance, the extremes to which an individual can bear pain, stretches beyond normal levels (Salter 2010). Her shows are also mostly based on the theme of the artist replicating her past mistakes and how the pain feels each time it’s new and after that when there is a history to it.
Abramovic had a rocky childhood that might have caused her extreme mental anguish. These stage performances are a way to understand the mental state, in physical terms and what happens when additional pain is added to the existing one. This making physical and into a show of the actual mental anguish that each and every one of us experiences in life at different points, is totally adherent to the fluxus way of art. In these performances, the life of pain becomes a visual reality to the audience. They also get engaged in the act of pain that might be hurting the artist and become sympathetic to the situation as a whole.
This method of making people feel might have more effect on the audience as the visuals are more vivid and the artist is now not just singing about the pain that she has had to endure, but she is actually showing how it might have felt to her, while she was experiencing it. It makes the audience think about how they felt in a similar situation and they might realise that they are stronger and more resilient than they think.
There is a reason why the fluxus movement is hard to define and describe. The artists involved were trying to create a tag free world, where the audience can be a part of the performance and the artists can do absolutely nothing on the stage. It was the unstaging. The stage that was once sacred and reserved only for the artists where only an alternate reality exists, got transformed into a stage where actual life happened. The artist could take their life to the stage, the pain or suffering and the joy or innovation could all be taken from the life to the stage. The boundary of life and art (which was previously viewed as just an expression of creative thinking, not actual life experience) blurred. The fluxus was successful. The artificialities of the high art were done away with.
The movement , even though it has artists attached to it, is not exclusive. Any artist can be a fluxus artist if he is taking life to the stage or canvas.
The flus movement came to an end with the death of its chief co-ordinator and founder George Maciunas in 1978. But like they say, the passing of a man does not equate to the death of his ideas. The ideas have a life of their own. The fluxus ideas and philosophies too continue to inspire every new generation of artists. But when the movement was alive, it started in the downtown New York and spread to Europe and finally to Japan. The art movement changed the fundamental definition of what was labelled as art. The artists fought back institutional art and organised museum hegemony. They accepted art as art even if it was not galerie worthy or commercially successful. This would go on to inspire a lot of artists who were just getting started. It made the definition of art to a broad term that can cover almost anything in art. Though the world lost a lot in Maciunas. The organisation fell apart and now there are no more ‘happenings’ anymore.
In conclusion, it can be easily said that the creative individual status that each of us enjoy today is the fruit of the works of fluxus artists. Fluxus also revolutionised the art economy. The fluxus artists produced cheaper art and mass sold to get profit. This was as opposed to the existing market where art was exclusive and highly priced. Though this aspect of art remains unchanged to this day, there is now a market for cheaply produced art too. I can be easily said that fluxus made the world of art more accessible to the masses. It paved the way for cost effective art forms that could now reach to wider audience (Buchloh 2003). It came up with the idea that the viewer of art can be illiterate and still appreciate it. It broke ground on lots of inclusive ideas.
Most importantly, fluxus gave life a place on the stage on on the canvas. Experiences and learnings were now not only in biographies and textbooks, they were now on stage. They were expressed as the artist wished to, without following any predefined formats or instructions. Fluxus thus gave the term experiencing art a very different meaning than it previously had. Now the artist can talk to the audience and audience could participate.
This movement however has not been without criticism. The art movement was too broad to define and thus with no definitive style, only the artists that vocally identify themselves as fluxus artists will be called so. The organisation and classification along with the murky history has all contributed to its threatened status as an art movement. The radical nature of artist contributions sometimes also becomes as a scrutiny point. The art movement just like others has had fiascoes and lapses. But the contribution to art world and to the new way of thinking are unarguable. Thus like every two sided coin, the fluxus has to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Works Cited
4’33. By John Cage. New York. 1952. Performance.
Buchloh, B. H. D. Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1965 to 1975. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2003. Print.
Higgins, Hannah. Fluxus Experience. Berkeley: U of California, 2002. Print.
Lejeunne, Denis. 2012. The Radical Use of Chance in 20th Century Art, p. 185
Maciunas, George. USA Surpasses All the Genocide Records! 1966.
Maciunas, George. The smile machine 1970.
Make a Salad. By Alison Knowles. San Fransico CA. 2011. Performance.
Munroe et al. 2000, p. 158
Réédition de Ben Dieu (1963)
Salter (2010). Entangled: technology and the transformation of performance. MIT Press. p. 244.
Smith, Roberta (24 May 1991). "Review/Art; Sleek Video Sculptures By Shigeko Kubota". The New York Times. p. 26. Retrieved 08 May 2016.
Vaultier, Ben. “Le style ces’t moi” 1972.
