Fluxus: The History of an Attitude

Still a topic not so much is known, but this publication provides many interesting apects. It contains many not so well known details.

exactly what my daughter needed. great book on great collection

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Owen Smith is an art historian and curator who wears a second hat as an artist active in intermedia, the contemporary transdisciplinary art form first named by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins. Smith is the founding director of the intermedia program at the University of Maine. As one of the first art historians to work seriously on the festive and often humorous work of the Fluxus artists, Smith provides a rich, lively account of a complex and subtle phenomenon that encompasses the work of such diverse figures as Higgins, Alison Knowles, George Brecht, Yoko Ono, Robert Watts, Carolee Schneemann, Wolf Vostell, and dozens more from Asia, North America and Europe. The complicated story of Fluxus also involves artists who kept a distance from a group with which their work has been inextricably linked -- La Monte Young, Henry Flynt, Jackson Mac Low and others. As difficult as it is to gather the threads in the rope that ties these artists and their work together, Smith has done an admirable job. He brings the story of their past together in clear, readable prose. This book was the first history of Fluxus, a significant contribution to a literature that now comprises hundreds of books. It remembers one of the best.

This book is a "must read" for the serious student of Fluxus. Owen Smith covers the difficult-to-define Fluxus movement with aplomb in this volume. Smith's effort has resulted in a work that gives a clear and mostly complimentary illumination to Fluxus without any overt biases or "axes to grind".Smith's definition of Fluxus as an attitude, and his elaboration of that attitude within its pages, seems to be close to the perfect description of what Fluxus was and is.By defining Fluxus as an attitude Owen Smith was able to get around the thorny issue of whether Fluxus died with George Maciunas, or continued on with artists like Dick Higgins and Ken Freidman through the 1990s - or for that matter whether Fluxus is alive and thriving "under the radar" to this day. Fluxus as an attitude is much tidier concept than Fluxus as a "movement" tied to a specific time, or as close-knit group of artists, or as some kind of formal/stylistic approach to art.While this book is a necessary addition to the library of the seriously interested, it may not be the best introductory volume for the uninitiated, as it is quite detailed and dense with data. But I loved it, and if you are "into Fluxus" you probably will too.