The Fluxus Blog

• Ray Johnson

  2008 Apr 28

  Ray Jay should have been on my list. I will get to him soon. In the meantime, you can read my earlier essay about him here.

• Energy That Matters: Marcel Duchamp

  2008 Apr 28

  
  

  • Jean Baudrillard
    
  • Charles Bukowski
    
  • John Cage
  • Leonard Cohen
  • Marcel Duchamp

  It has taken me a while to get to this entry. Duchamp, for me, ranks with John Cage as a figure of such incredible importance to the arts that it is simply not possible to sum him up in a few short sentences. At least not with a sense of justice. But then, since I did it for Cage, I'll do it for Duchamp too! Just remember that this is only the twenty second elevator speech version. Duchamp was active in the early part of the 20th century primarily as a painter. While even his paintings were revolutionary for their time (he included the dimension of time, taking cubism to another level - and cubism was already considered revolutionary), his real revolution came with his exhibition of the "ready-made" as a work of art. He turned a urinal 90 degrees, called it "Fountain", and signed it "R. Mutt", he brought a shovel into a gallery and called it, "in advance of a broken arm", and he exhibited a found bottle rack as a finished sculpture. His actions angered and confused the general public, and also most of the artistic elite. People ridiculed him and his work. But these simple actions by an artist changed art irrevocably and forever. These works forced people to ask not only what is "good art" or "bad art", but "what is art"? What can be art? What makes an object art anyway? Who can make art? Who can decide what is or is not art? Marcel Duchamp changed not only the world of art. He changed the world.

  • Allen Ginsberg
    
  • Albert Einstein
    
  • Karl Marx
    
  • Jean-Paul Sartre
    
  • Andy Warhol

• Energy That Matters: Leonard Cohen

  2008 Feb 17

  
  

  • Jean Baudrillard
    
  • Charles Bukowski
    
  • John Cage
  • Leonard Cohen

  He was never closely associated with Fluxus, and his work falls pretty neatly into the modernist traditions of art and writing. So, why have I chosen to write about Cohen in The Fluxus Blog? I guess that the first connection that can be made between him and Fluxus is that one could make the argument that as a poet, singer, and songwriter, Leonard Cohen is engaged in the original Intermedia form. What could be more Intermedia than the intersection between poetry, music, and performance? I think that the argument is valid. But it is not overwhelmingly convincing. Fluxus was also about experimentation, humor, and postmodern philosophical ideas. Never-the-less, I think that poetic minstrels, like Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, at the dawn of the postmodern era, deserve a place at the Fluxus table. I chose Cohen primarily because of one stanza in one song. The song is Famous Blue Raincoat, and the stanza speaks about a friend who has moved into the desert to build a small home and plans to live off of the land. Cohen says of his friend, "You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record." And for me, this moves Cohen's work outside of the modernist realm and into the realm of postmodern reflections on meaning and language.

  • Marcel Duchamp
    
  • Allen Ginsberg
    
  • Albert Einstein
    
  • Karl Marx
    
  • Jean-Paul Sartre
    
  • Andy Warhol

• Energy That Matters: John Cage

  2008 Feb 07

  
  
  • Jean Baudrillard
    
  • Charles Bukowski
    
  • John Cage
    
    The Godfather of Fluxus. John Cage may never have been a member of the Fluxus movement as it existed under the auspices of George Maciunas, but Cage was a seminal figure for Fluxus and for all postmodern art that came after him. Cage made the observation, that in retrospect seems very simple, but which in its effect on arts and culture was enormous, that music consisted of nothing but sound. One way of composing music was to use the standard European music notation system. But since music was nothing but sound, Cage reasoned that it could be composed using any sounds. Natural sounds, manufactured sounds. Sounds usually thought of as noise. Even silence, and the sounds that occur within a "silent" environment. While artists working around the same time were already looking at paintings as being composed only of paint on canvas, and drawings as being composed purely of marks on paper, Cage opened the door much wider - to art being constructed out of anything that could be sensed by humans. Therefore the role of the artists expanded to include any person who created things that could be sensed by other people. In fact since a musical composition could consist solely of the score for a performance, art could also now exist solely as the score (i.e. Fluxus event scores) for constructing an object, performance, or Intermedia composition.
    
    
  • Leonard Cohen
    
  • Marcel Duchamp
    
  • Allen Ginsberg
    
  • Albert Einstein
    
  • Karl Marx
    
  • Jean-Paul Sartre
    
  • Andy Warhol
    

• Energy That Matters: Charles Bukowski

  2008 Feb 03

  
  
  • Jean Baudrillard
    
  • Charles Bukowski
    
    Bukowski, while contemporary to Fluxus, was never a part of it, and I suspect he would not have wanted to be. Equally, I suspect that the contemporaneous Fluxus people would not have been keen to have him.
    
    Never-the-less, Bukowski is an important figure for understanding the Fluxus Attitude. His poetry insists on two features that are important to Fluxus practice; accessibility and brevity. Bukowski embodies the Fluxus ideal of cutting away superfluous cultural baggage to tell big stories using a few small words. And one does not need to have a multi-volume dictionary handy to understand what he is saying.
    
    
  • John Cage
    
  • Leonard Cohen
    
  • Marcel Duchamp
    
  • Allen Ginsberg
    
  • Albert Einstein
    
  • Karl Marx
    
  • Jean-Paul Sartre
    
  • Andy Warhol
    

• Energy That Matters: Jean Baudrillard

  2008 Feb 03

  
  
  • Jean Baudrillard
  
  
  Baudrillard may not have invented postmodernism, but he provided one on the best descriptions of it in his book, Simulacra and Simulations. Baudrillard describes a cultural universe in which humanity exists in a perpetual hall of mirrors, epitomized by television and the Internet. The media present us with an idealized world view that we consciously and unconsciously attempt to emulate --- then the media reflects our attempts at mimicry back at us, in an endless loop of copying ourselves copying a non-existent, fictional version of reality.
  

  
  Baudrillard's postmodern universe is very much in keeping with the Fluxus Attitude, and with Intermedia practices.
  
  

  • Charles Bukowski
    
  • John Cage
    
  • Leonard Cohen
    
  • Marcel Duchamp
    
  • Allen Ginsberg
    
  • Albert Einstein
    
  • Karl Marx
    
  • Jean-Paul Sartre
    
  • Andy Warhol