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George Maciunas was the founder and leader of a radical and experimental art movement of the 1960s known as Fluxus--which rejected traditional high art to practice an extraordinary form of anti-art. Maciunas attempted to rule Fluxus in totalitarian fashion, yet he laughed at himself and called forth laughter in others. This biography reveals the story of an unorthodox, contradictory, and elusive genius. 107 illustrations.
"George Maciunas is typically associated with the famous art collective Fluxus, of which he is often thought to have been the leader. In this book, critic and art historian Colby Chamberlain wants us to question two things: first, the idea that Fluxus was a "group" in any conventional sense, and second, that Maciunas was its "leader." Instead, Chamberlain shows us how Maciunas used the paper materials of bureaucracy in his art-cards, certificates, charts, files, and plans, among others-to subvert his own status as a "figurehead" of this collective and even as a biographical entity. Each of the book's chapters situates Maciunas's artistic practice in relation to a different domain: education,...
The art of cross-linked thinking consists in facilitating dealing with complexity and admitting new insights. This approach, prevailing in all realms of knowledge, determines also the artistic praxis of Fluxus initiator George Maciunas. This book shows some hundred diagrams and maps related to history from antiquity to postmodernism; they serve to visualize artistic, political, and economic correlations. If it were up to Maciunas, there wouldn’t be any real concept of the past without percepts. With his maps, diagrams, and tables, a big part of which is published for the first time, he tries to draw a picture of history in a different way. The result seems fascinating both on a scientific and artistic level. It opens insights into eye-opening correlations between dates and facts as well as makes appear completely novel forms of knowledge transfer.
Below the level of the musical note lies the realm of microsound, of sound particleslasting less than one-tenth of a second. Recent technological advances allow us to probe andmanipulate these pinpoints of sound, dissolving the traditional building blocks of music -- notesand their intervals -- into a more fluid and supple medium. The sensations of point, pulse (seriesof points), line (tone), and surface (texture) emerge as particle density increases. Soundscoalesce, evaporate, and mutate into other sounds.Composers have used theories of microsound incomputer music since the 1950s. Distinguished practitioners include Karlheinz Stockhausen and IannisXenakis. Today, with the increased interest in computer and electronic music, many young composersand software synthesis developers are exploring its advantages. Covering all aspects of compositionwith sound particles, Microsound offers composition theory, historical accounts, technicaloverviews, acoustical experiments, descriptions of musical works, and aesthetic reflections. Thebook is accompanied by an audio CD of examples.
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.
Edited by Barry Bergdoll, Peter Christensen. Texts by Barry Bergdoll, Peter Christensen, Ken Tadashi Oshima, Rasmus Waen.
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Allan Kaprow's "happenings" and "environments" were the precursors to contemporary performance art, and his essays are some of the most thoughtful, provocative, and influential of his generation. His sustained inquiry into the paradoxical relationship of art to life and into the nature of meaning itself is brought into focus in this newly expanded collection of his most significant writings. A new preface and two new additional essays published in the 1990s bring this valuable collection up to date.
The original edition of this ambitious reference was published in hardcover in 1998, in two oversize volumes (10x13"). This edition combines the two volumes into one; it's paperbound ("flexi-cover"--the paper has a plastic coating), smaller (8x10", and affordable for art book buyers with shallower pockets--none of whom should pass it by. The scope is encyclopedic: half the work (originally the first volume) is devoted to painting; the other half to sculpture, new media, and photography. Chapters are arranged thematically, and each page displays several examples (in color) of work under discussion. The final section, a lexicon of artists, includes a small bandw photo of each artist, as well as biographical information and details of work, writings, and exhibitions. Ruhrberg and the three other authors are veteran art historians, curators, and writers, as is editor Walther. c. Book News Inc.