Yves Klein: Leap into the Void

Fluxus

John Cage: Four Minutes, 33 Seconds

Allan Kaprow: 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, 1959

Allan Kaprowmovement score for18 Happenings in 6 parts1959

Allan Kaprowscore for 18 Happenings in 6 parts1959

George Macunias: Fluxus Manifesto, 1963

“Promote living art, anti-art, promote non-art reality to be fully grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes and professionals.”

ARTTo justify artist's professional, parasitic and elite status in society, he must demonstrate artist's indispensability and exclusiveness, he must demonstrate the dependability of audience upon him, he must demonstrate that no one but the artist an do art.Therefore, art must appear to be complex, pretentious, profound, serious, intellectual, inspired, skillful, significant, theatrical,

It must appear to be valuable as commodity so as to provide the artist with an income.

To raise its value (artist's income and patrons profit), art is made to appear rare, limited in quantity and therefore obtainable and accessible only to the social elite and institutions.

FLUXUS ART-AMUSEMENTTo establish artist's nonprofessional status in society, he must demonstrate artist's dispensability and inclusiveness, he must demonstrate the self-sufficiency of the audience, he must demonstrate that anything can be art and anyone can do it.Therefore, art-amusement must be simple, amusing, unpretentious, concerned with insignificances, require no skill or countless rehearsals, have no commodity or institutional value.The value of art-amusement must be lowered by making it unlimited, mass-produced, obtainable by all and eventually produced by all.Fluxus art-amusement is the rear-guard without any pretention or urge to participate in the competition of "one-upmanship" with the avant-garde. It strives for the monostructural and nontheatrical qualities of simple natural event, a game or a gag. It is the fusion of Spikes Jones Vaudeville, gag, children's games and Duchamp.

Ben Vautier: Total Art Match-Box, 1968; Flux Mystery Food(unopened, contents unknown), 1966

Ben Vautier: Wrapped in string and playing a violin piece by George Maciunas. The photo was taken on May 23, 1964 at 359 Canal Street, New York City during the "Street Events" segment of theFlux Festival at Fluxhall.

Various artists: Fluxus Street-Cleaning Event

Yoko Ono: Cut Piece (1965); Joseph Beuys: I Like America, America Likes Me (

Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik

Fluxus remains the most complex and therefore widely underestimated art movement (or non-movement, as it called itself) of the early to mid-sixties. Fluxus saw no distinction between art and life, and believed that routine, banal, and everyday actions could be regarded as artistic events, declaring that “everything is art and everyone can do it.”

-- Hal Foster

Many artists have associated themselves with Fluxus over the years, including:

• Alison Knowles • George Maciunas • Gustav Metzger • Larry Miller• Yoko Ono • Litsa Spathi • Ruud Janssen • Ray Johnson

• Nam June Paik • Ben Patterson • Yasunao Tone • Ben Vautier • Emmett Williams • Wolf Vostell • La Monte Young

• Joseph Beuys • George Brecht • Henry Flynt • Ken Friedman • Al Hansen • Geoffrey Hendricks • Robert Filliou • Dick Higgins