A Fluxmiscellany.

List 46. Best viewed in your browser window.

"Approaching it, we are pioneers again..." (Dick Higgins) // On the occasion of the ABAA's Boston Virtual Book Fair, we are pleased to issue our newest avant-garde list, on Fluxus. Prices are listed in USD. For purchase inquiries, please phone (+1) 416-729-7043 or email jason@paperbooks.ca; priority given to first interest. Sold items marked via end-cap buttons; prices removed upon-request. Items are guaranteed to be described and delivered to the collector's satisfaction; returns are acceptable within 10 days of receipt. Reciprocal terms are extended to the trade; institutional and pandemic policies are accommodated. To receive advance copies of future lists, please subscribe to our mailing list. Specific wants are always welcome, from both new and established collectors.

Cage, John / Tudor, David
The Living Theatre presents: John Cage, reading. David Tudor, music. Indeterminacy: new aspect of form in instrumental and electronic music...

New York: The Living Theatre, 1960.
150 USD
Single sheet (28 x 21.5 cm.), with minimalist text composed in single right-justified column. Some faint creasing to lower portion, with hard crease to bottom right corner.

One of the primal scenes of Fluxus can be found in the summers of 1958 and 1959, in the experimental composition seminars offered by John Cage at the New School for Social Research. Those in attendance: George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Al Hansen, Allan Kaprow, and Jackson Mac Low. Partially in reaction to the harsh-identity that was being introduced into music by the emergence of electronic instruments (where composition equals performance), Cage sought to explore the aleatory potential of experimental notation, to nourish more vital relationships between composer, score, and performer. By 1960, Brecht had absorbed and inflected Cage's teachings with his invention of the "event score;" one of the formal pillars to the performative interpretation of Life that would unite these artists in Flux. Here: an announcement for a 1960 performance of Cage's new Folkways album at The Living Theatre's location at the corner of 14th and 6th, where Cage and Merce Cunningham rented a third-floor studio. With musical accompaniment by David Tudor and poster-design attributed to then-gallerist George Maciunas.

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Kaprow, Allan / Whitman, Robert

[A service for the dead. Programme].
New York: The New York Poets Theatre, 1962.
250 USD
Bifolium (21.5 cm.), with small chip to upper corner of front panel and unidentified address supplied in-manuscript to rear.

Developing in parallel with (and slightly prior-to) the formal inventions of Fluxus (e.g. event-scores, concerts, kits), there were the Happenings imagined by the post-painterly Allan Kaprow. Here: a scarce programme for one such Happening on March 22, 1962, as part of the Poets Festival organized by Diane Di Prima's New York Poets Theatre at the Maidman Playhouse, in conjunction with screenings from Robert Whitman. Although identified by the programme as A HAPPENING - Untitled, we now recognize this performance as the first part of Kaprow's A service for the dead, in which the audience was lead, single-file, by a procession of musicians from the foyer of the Playhouse, down the stairs, past dimly-lit prop stores and dressing rooms, and into the building's ancient boiler room, with "everything festering and damp... clumps of rusted pipes, valves, electrical conduits, exposed wire, bent and broken." Where a primeval funeral service played-out for a naked woman who lay motionless on a horizontal ladder suspended from the ceiling. The programme gives nothing of this away—but instead provides a brief artist statement from Kaprow on the international progress of the Happenings movement and on his own understanding of the stage: "My Happenings do not need the stage and tend to avoid most of the conventions belonging to that aspect of theater. Instead, they take place anywhere else where life can go on: the woods, in the kitchen, on the subway, in half-demolished buildings, and at the ocean. For me they have the character of rites."

With no OCLC records discovered.

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Maciunas, George
Fluxus. [Brochure prospectus for Fluxus Yearboxes, Version A].

Wiesbaden: Fluxus, 1962.
1200 USD
Textured olive wrappers (20 x 21.5 cm.), side-stapled, with "fluxus" boldly-printed in cursive to front panel. Contents: [4] pages printed to single orange sheet; illustrated by one of Maciunas' art-historical word-clouds. Some rusting to staples and waving to thin orange sheets; nonetheless, a well-preserved copy of a true Fluxus rarity. Cf. Silverman < 541.I, ff; this first state distinguished by its orange papers, with the subsequent state printed on white paper, with some differences to text.

Ground zero. Although most-often associated with its New York epicenter, Fluxus properly found its momentum in Europe, after George Maciunas had fled the debts from his Manhattan art gallery and taken-up work as a graphic designer with the U.S. Air Force in Wiesbaden, Germany. From this perch, Maciunas brought together a number of the artists with whom he'd hoped to publish a magazine named Fluxus, and thus organized a series of concerts throughout Europe in 1962-1963; a gang that included George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Nam June Paik, Benjamin Patterson, Emmett Williams, and Wolf Vostell. The first of these concerts took place on June 9th at Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal: Kleines Sommerfest: Après John Cage. And it was here that Maciunas delivered the first public announcement of the Fluxus programme, with the present brochure; beginning with the dictionary definition of "flux" that famously inspired Maciunas towards the name, and served as the foundation for his 1963 manifesto.

Distributed to the concert audience in Wuppertal, the brochure presented Fluxus as a publishing programme of seven "yearboxes," each associated with a particular nation or region, along with an organization chart of the various sections of Fluxus' "Editorial Committee," with Maciunas named as Chairman. Only two of these yearboxes were ever completed, despite the detailed list of contents boasted here. Of note: for the yearbox attributed to the German & Scandinavian sections, the brochure lists T. W. Adorno as "being consulted."

Recorded in the collections of a handful of museums (e.g. MoMA, Walker, Fondazione Bonotto), but with only a single OCLC record discovered (Munich).

SOLD

Brecht, George

Cloud scissors.
[New York], circa 1964.
350 USD
Housed within white envelope (9 x 14 cm.), with titles printed to front: 7 cards (averaging 7.5 x 9 cm.) printed to thick white stock. Preserved in pristine condition. Silverman No. 45, ff.

As both an experimental composer and professional chemist (working for both Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson), George Brecht's event-scores were perhaps inevitably drawn to Higgins' ideal of art occurring through its "minimal constituent parts." For instance: his infamous Word event from 1961, which provided but a single instruction to the performer: "Exit." With Cloud scissors, this minimum is stretched further, with each card offering but an instructional fragment; a series of inflections to be used by the recipient in myriad contexts, as per the title on the envelope: "music, dance, stories, games, puzzles, jokes, defections, solutions, problems, biography, questions, poems, answers, gifts." Dedicated to Robert Filliou (before the two artists would pursue their utopian Fluxshop in the south of France) and first appearing as part of the contents of the Fluxbox Water yam (1963); this copy issues from the autonomous edition which was distributed through various Fluxshops in the mid 1960s. (Another variant would be published as insert in the pages of AQ 16).

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Kubota, Shigeku

Perpetual Fluxfest... See vagina painting!
New York: Fluxus, [1965].
*****
Small broadside (33 x 22 cm.), boldly-printed to centre of cream sheet. A clean print, with minor handling-creases to wide margins. The same composition appears in issue 5 of the Fluxus newspaper acc V TRE from March.

Almost certainly designed by Maciunas, this broadside promoted the summer sessions from the second year of the Perpetual Fluxfest in New York; a series of biweekly events held at the Cinematheque at 85 East 4th Street. Promoted here, amongst other Fluxus artists, was Shigeko Kubota—who had arrived from Tokyo in the previous summer along with Mieko Shiomi—and was quickly anointed as Fluxus "Vice President" by Maciunas for her eagerness to assist in organizational matters. On July 4, 1965, Kubota took the stage for her first (and last) solo performance with Vagina painting; a once-obscure performance which has since been resurrected by feminist scholarship.

Reminiscent of Nam June Paik's 1962 Zen for head—as well as the geisha tradition of hanadensha—Kubota, wearing a short dress, appeared to insert a paint brush into her vagina. Returning to dip/squat said brush in a bucket of red paint, Kubota then crouched her way across large scrolls of white paper, producing works of pseudo-menstrual calligraphy.

SOLD

Galerie Parnass

24 Stunden.
Wuppertal, 1965.
600 USD
Large broadside (51 x 65 cm.), printed with green titles over architectural plan of Rolf Jährling's villa/performance space. Some sunning to fold-lines, with minor offsetting of green titles from previous folding; nonetheless, a well-preserved copy of a landmark poster.

Back in 1962, the architect Rolf Jährling asked Nam June Paik to hold a concert in his newly-acquired Art Nouveau villa in Wuppertal, an hour east of Düsseldorf. Transforming the villa into Galerie Parnass, Jährling's intention was to incubate a "germ cell of rebellion" and a Renaissance in post-War German art. The result of this inaugural commission was Kleines Sommerfest: Après John Cage; the public debut of Fluxus (see #03 above). Three years later, and only a few months before he and his wife would mothball their gallery-villa for a road-trip through Africa, Jährling organized one final Fluxus concert, to happen across a span of 24 hours, midnight-to-midnight, with each performer assigned a different room in the villa. (Only Beuys and Paik/Moorman played with the full duration in their performances). The bold announcement poster clearly communicates the exhibition's parameters, with the performers and their timing super-imposed over a blueprint of the villa (bearing the stamp of Järhling's architectural firm).

With only a single OCLC record discovered (Munich).

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(Brown, Earle) / Moorman, Charlotte / Paik, Nam June
New School presents: Nam June Paik… I. Electronic TV + color TV Experiments. II. 3 Robots. III. Pop Sonata. IV. 2 Zen boxes + 1 Zen can.

New York: New School for Social Research, 1965.
350 USD
Invitation. Tall broadsheet mailer (41.5 x 20 cm.); twice-folded, with some rubbing. Recto illustrated-after Peter Moore photograph of Nam June Paik's Robot K-456, with titles and credits, including separate credit for Charlotte Moorman as "Cellorina," which has been underlined by Moorman in her usual red crayon. This invitation having been mailed to the Paris hotel of Earle Brown, with Moorman's red manuscript to the mailing label. Some ghosting from postage tape.

A compelling association copy of this invitation to Nam June Paik's first solo show in the United States, mailed by Charlotte Moorman to New York School composer Earle Brown at his Parisian hotel. For this one-night performance at the New School for Social Research, Paik and Moorman were accompanied by Fluxus colleagues Dick Higgins, Mieko Shiomi, and Philip Corner. The verso supplies an artist statement from Paik ("Electronic TV & color TV experiment"), illustrated by circuit diagram and accompanied by excerpts from press reviews.

With single OCLC record discovered (Northwestern).

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Maciunas, George

Fluxus (its historical development and relationship to avant-garde movements).
[New York], circa 1966.
850 USD
Tall broadside (42.5 x 14.5 cm.), illustrated with conceptual diagram to bottom half. This variant printed on orange-red paper. Fold-line at centre (now preserved flat); otherwise Fine. Silverman No. 279, ff.

Trained as an architect, graphic designer, and art historian, Maciunas' historiographic diagrams—his "learning machines"—perhaps represent the most lasting dimension of his legacy (in our era of information visualization). Commissioned in 1966 for the Czech magazine Slovo, pismo, acke, hlas, the present chart seeks to locate Fluxus within the broader complex of the avant-garde (and vice versa). Printed on white, light green, and red sheets, it was distributed loose in FLUXKIT C and as independent leaflets.

With only 4 OCLC records discovered; three in North America (Northwestern, CalArts, SFMoMA).

SOLD

Moorman, Charlotte

[Charlotte Moorman, nude in performance].
Stuttgart: Vertrieb Durch Reflection Press, [1970].
*****
Xerographic print (30 x 21 cm.), with some surface wear, affixed to tan board (31 x 22.5 cm.), which shows slight bump to lower corner. With Reflection Press hand-stamp to verso, along with sticker featuring Moorman's signature and previous dealer's (erroneous) typescript description affixed by scotch tape.

"After the emancipations in 20th century music, (serial-indeterministic, actional).... I have found that there is still one more chain to lose.... that is.... PRE-FREUDIAN HYPOCRICY. Why is sex a predominant theme in art and literature [and] prohibited ONLY in music? How long can New Music afford to be sixty years behind the times and still claim to be a serious art? The purge of sex under the excuse of being 'serious' exactly undermines the so-called 'seriousness' of music as a classical art, ranking with literature and painting. Music history needs its D. H. Lawrence, its Sigmund Freud." Such was Nam June Paik's short manifesto printed to the invitation for the 1967 performance of Opera sextronique, where Charlotte Moorman was arrested by New York City police for obscenity, during the performance's (topless) second movement. She was eventually found guilty, although with suspended sentence. In Europe, however, Moorman found greater freedom. In 1970, she was invited by Harald Szeemann to perform in the landmark Happening & Fluxus exhibition in Köln. Without Paik, she performed TV bra, as well as the premiere of his anti-War composition Peace sonata. Once there, she was also invited to collaborate on performances with both Hermann Nitsch and Otto Meuhl; for the latter (in what's been since categorized as an orgy), she "droned one note for twenty minutes, in the nude, during Manopsychotic ballet (part 2)" (Rothfuss, p. 255)—a collaboration that's preserved here in this scarce image reproduced by Reflection Press.

SOLD

Moorman, Charlotte / Paik, Nam June
Mixed media opera... Benefit for legal expenses.

New York: Norman J. Seaman, 1968.
*****
Broadsheet (43 x 21 cm.), with recto fully-illustrated after collage by Jim McWilliams. Verso features excerpts, mostly from newspaper reports of Moorman's 1967 arrest in New York. In Fine condition.

Pursued by creditors, and threatened with prison once again, Moorman organized a benefit concert in June 1968, under the pretense of covering legal expenses from her 1967 trial. (In her biography Topless cellist, Rothfuss suggests otherwise; attributing the 1968 debts to costs for piano rental and poster printing from the most recent of Moorman's avant-garde festivals). Sadly, the concert—in addition to being panned by the press, as well as the occasion for Paik informing Moorman that their collaboration was drawing to a close—was also a flop as a fundraiser, with only $300 in receipts against $1200 in expenses. Of note, the verso features a report of the judge's comments from the 1967 trial, as witnessed by Jud Yalkut: "Judge Shalleck proceeded to attack the 'bearded, bathless 'Beats,' the clothes of Yves St. Laurent and Rudi Gernreich, which 'make women look like they are not women,' and the underground 'happeners' who create 'a kind of brothel of the intellect.' He claims to have tried 'to give sympathetic understanding' to the 'John Cage breakthrough in art' and then confesses to having walked out of a Leonard Bernstein performance of 'one of Cage's pieces.'"

With no OCLC records discovered.

SOLD

Flynt, Henry

Down with art!
New York: Fluxpress, 1968.
850 USD
Oblong self-wrappers (10.5 x 27.5 cm.), with front panel fully-illustrated after photograph of Flynt's 1963 lecture. Contents: [12] pages. Minor sunning to front panel; otherwise a well-preserved copy of an uncommon work. Silverman No. 582, ff.

Here: the first solo publication from the iconoclast, philosopher, and experimental musician Henry Flynt, with its contents largely concerned with the events of February 27, 1963, when Flynt—along with Tony Conrad and Jack Smith—picketed MoMA, the New York Philharmonic, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (where the Mona Lisa was being exhibited to record crowds), to demonstrate against the harmful effects of Serious Culture and Art snobbery. The next evening, Flynt delivered one of his performative lectures—in front of a portrait of Mayakovsky—at the loft of Walter De Maria, where he articulated his theory of liberation through "veramusement." Also collected here: responses to Flynt's theories (both supportive and critical) from the likes of Terry Riley, Bob Morris, and Walter De Maria, and a two-paged anti-art spread from Ben Vautier. Perhaps most importantly, this pamphlet contains the first elaboration of Flynt's theory of "brend," as an utopian, post-art form of experience, through which persons could escape alienation through a focus on their just-likings. "When you write with a pencil, you are rarely attentive to the fact that the pencil was produced by somebody other than yourself. You can use something produced by somebody else without thinking about it. In your just-likings, you never notice that things are not produced by you. The essence of a just-liking is that in it, you are not aware that the object you value is less personal to you than your very valuing."

With nine OCLC records discovered in North America; none in Canada.

SOLD

Vostell, Wolf

Putzen: Aktionsanleitung zur Handlungseinheit Putzen.
Stuttgart: Reflection Press, 1968.
350 USD
Action-invitation printed to tan sheet (15.5 x 21 cm.), with recto fully-illustrated after a black-and-white photograph by T. Tilly of a Vostell work (Türklinkenplastik); text to verso in German. This instruction sheet being corner-stapled to mail-in submission form (14.5 x 21 cm.), with bank transfer instructions to recto and brief questionnaire to verso, along with mounting-space for 6 x 9 cm. photograph. Minor sunning and spotting, with slight crease to top corner of invitation; otherwise a well-preserved copy of a scarce survival.

Here: an invitation to a mail-art action organized by Wolf Vostell, in coordination with Dietrich Albrecht's Reflection Press in Stuttgart. For this particularly civic-minded action (reminiscent of Hi Red Centre's street cleaning events), Vostell invited participants to venture out into their communities with hygienic intentions: to clean a door handle of their choosing—in a subway station, bank, supermarket, gas station, et cetera. A photograph of each action could then be submitted, along with 10 D.M., and Vostell would sign the photograph and return to sender; thus certifying said action as art. The submission form includes a brief questionnaire, with participants asked to provide a few absurd details, such as their blood pressure and shoe size.

With no OCLC records discovered for this invitation, which constitutes one of the earliest projects of Reflection Press (and does not appear in Steven Leiber's bibliography). To receive an advance copy of our upcoming list on Albrecht and the Reflection Press, subscribe to our mailing list.

SOLD

Vautier, Ben

BEN. Films.
[Paris]: Edition Daniel Templon, circa 1970.
150 USD
Glossy white wrappers (18 x 15 cm.), with minimalist titles. Contents: [10] pages, also printed to versos of wrappers. Well-illustrated, with each of the 8 films illustrated after b&w still image. Minor yellowing.

Perhaps surprisingly, Fluxus artists did not immediately jump into cinema en masse, although the documentary nature of the movie camera seemed ideally suited to their performative works. As Higgins wrote in Postface: "The result is that the film has yet to begin. The film, as an art, is not a mauled and scorched, chemically and physically altered raped object, so much as it is a means of documenting what can be seen by a single, objective-by-definition eye-lens. One shows the eye what one loves, what one hopes and dreams, what is terrible or beautiful, anything, anything at all. A camera is innocent. It just keeps on looking, so long as one winds it up or flicks its power switch, while the film maker just notices and thinks and considers." Here: a catalogue of eight Super-8 event films by Ben (Vautier), produced between 1962-1970. Vautier's sparseness seems ideally suited to the form, with each of the films consumed with a single action; documented here by still images, titles (in French, English, German, and Italian), running time, and date.

With only 2 OCLC records discovered; only one of those in North America (Getty).

SOLD

Filliou, Robert

... Solidaritätsveranstaltung für Angela Davis. [Invitation].
Köln: galerie art intermedia, 1971.
450 USD
Invitation/score. Broadsheet leaflet (19 x 20 cm.), illustrated to recto with thumbnail profile of Angela Davis. Original English version of text to verso, along with facsimile of Filliou's signature and his manuscript inserts; the German translation provided to recto is accompanied by additional information regarding the bank account to which donations can be made. Horizontal fold-line, otherwise Near Fine.

A scarce survival from Filliou's interdisciplinary research into a poetical interpretation of economics, in which he specifically sought to propose/explore the experimental concepts of availability-value, memory-value, and solidarity-value (as alternatives to traditional concepts such as use and labour value). Incredibly prescient, Filliou here anticipates the affective turn in economics, not to mention the 21st century form of crowd-funding: "On Sunday afternoon 31st of October 1971, I will shake hands with and thank any person contributing 40 Marks to the defense fund of Angela Davis, whose trial begins the 1st of November in Los Angeles. No work will be sold, no signature given, no photo, no record, and yet I attach a value to my presence and my act: 40 D.M. per person met, talked to, and shaked hands with."

Ironically, given the current offering, one of Filliou's amendments to the English text reads: "There is nothing tangible to buy, so nothing to resell later on." (Sorry, Robert).

With only a single OCLC record discovered (Köln).

PURCHASE / INQUIRE

Maciunas, George / Albrecht, Dietrich
U.S.A. surpasses all the genocide records! [Revised].

Stuttgart: Reflection Press, circa 1973.
*****
Broadside (40 x 61 cm.), printed stark red-on-white, after the style of the American flag, with 50 skull-and-crossbones replacing the stars and genocide statistics in-place of stripes. Minor creasing to left margin. Revised version of Silverman No. 247, ff.

In 1966, George Maciunas first created his "genocide flag" provocation, employing the force of statistics to illustrate how the United States government had surpassed Kublai Khan, the Spanish conquistadors, Joseph Stalin, and the Nazis, in terms of the murder of ethnic populations. At that time, the U.S. had "only" murdered 6.5% of the South Vietnamese (in addition to 75% of American Indians). By 1973, as the Vietnam kill-rate reached 9.5%, Maciunas collaborated with Dietrich Albrecht in Stuttgart to create a revised edition of the work, in which the blue canton of the American flag was now washed in the same blood red as the statistics-qua-stripes. "Maciunas particularly wanted the poster to be anonymous so that its impact would be seen for itself, not because of a name associated with it" (Leiber, 1998). In both versions of the flag, the provoked were welcomed to write to the Fluxus P.O. Box in New York; in-response they would receive a sheet of statistics with which to fact-check the claim; this time signed-off by Maciunas.

SOLD

Knizak, Milan
Milan Knizak... Czech artist in Prague sentenced for 2 years in prison!

Stuttgart: Reflection Press, 1973.
150 USD
Illustrated wrappers (29 cm.), with glued blue spine, starting to split. Contents: [40] pages, with [2] pp. also printed to verso of wrappers; executed in the "xerographic" style of the Reflection Press. Texts in Czech, German, English, and French. Illustrated throughout after facsimiles, photographs, and drawings. Reflection Press no. 31.

A scrapbook-like publication on the works of the Czech performance/street artist, and founder of Actual Art, Milan Knizak; oft-arrested, as per the subtitle to this cover. Includes facsimile of a reference letter from Allan Kaprow and a review by Pierre Restanay. For more items from the Reflection Press, please subscribe to our newsletter for our upcoming list.

SOLD

Knowles, Alison
Objects in hand [invitation].

Amsterdam: Stichting De Appel, 1976.
100 USD
Invitation. Featuring small broadside (21 x 29.5 cm.), fully-illustrated after negative photograph, with titles to bottom edge. Green hand-stamp from De Appel gallery to verso. Accompanied by Dutch / English press release (29.5 x 21 cm.), printed recto-only, with same hand-stamp over portion of English text. With fold-lines to centres of both sheets and impression from previous paper-clip; otherwise bright and crisp.

An invitation to two performances by Knowles in Amsterdam (May 14 and 15), and to the accompanying exhibition (which ran until May 29), which featured "slide show, small objects, graphics, paintings." The press release features a biography of Knowles followed by brief artist statement: "the objects that I investigate in my work are found in the street or are very familiar and come from daily use. the more real and ordinary they are, the more interesting they become to me. they offer clues to reality and have become the stuff of my art. i observe, examine, and collect. i present no specific meanings or theories about these little things that come my way.... that are just waiting for me to pick them up."

SOLD

Shiomi, Mieko
Spatial poem.

Osaka: Osaka Kikaku Center, 1976.
600 USD
Oblong (20.5 x 27 cm.); shimmering green wrappers, printed with white titles and graphics to both covers. Minor rubbing to spine, with minor crease to top-left corner; otherwise a well-preserved copy of a somewhat-fragile production. Onion-skin endpapers. Contents: [2], 70 pages; illustrated-throughout after photographs and diagrams.

"This is the record of the nine global events which were performed during the period from 1965 to 1975." From Mieko (sometimes Chieko) Shiomi: this lovingly-published summation of her iterative Spatial poem series, in which she leveraged the Fluxus network to explore the boundaries of "anonymous poetry." For nine distinct events, Shiomi sent simple instructions through the mails to her potential contributors, and then mapped the responses that were mailed back to her into various poetic forms. For instance, for Spatial poem no. 1, Shiomi's prompt read: "Write a word (or words) on the enclosed card and place it somewhere. Please tell me the word and the place, which will be edited on the world map." With the final result being a hand-drawn global map on a cardboard slab, with each of the answers printed and pinned to their appropriate locations as flags.

This summary of the project as of 1976 (there would be subsequent iterations; see below) covers nine of these events: Word event, Direction event, Falling event, Shadow event, Open event, Orbit event, Sound event, Wind event, and Disappearing event, documenting both the invitation-prompts and the results. The contents are introduced by an impressive list of the contributors: Eric Andersen, Ay-o, John Baldessari, George Brecht, Stanley Brouwn, Jean Brown, John Cage, Christo, Robin Crozier, Willem De Ridder, Robert Filliou, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, Richard Hamilton, Geoff Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Sylvester Houédard, Ray Johnson, Allan Kaprow, Bengt af Klintberg, Alison Knowles, Arthur Koepcke, Jiri Kolar, George Maciunas, Jackson Mac Low, Jonas Mekas, Barbara Moore, Maurizio Nannucci, Robin Page, Nam June Paik, Knud Pedersen, Diter Rot, Takako Saito, Akira Sakaguchi, Carolee Schneemann, Paul Sharits, Daniel Spoerri, Endré Tot, Ben Vautier, Wolf Vostell, Bob Watts, Peter Weibel, Tom Wesselmann, La Monte Young, and Marian Zazeela.

With a dozen OCLC records discovered in North America; uncommon in the trade.

SOLD

Jones, Joe

People music: the outline and thickness of a person becomes a music box...
Asolo, Italy: Pari and Dispari, 1976.
*****
Invitation, printed recto only to thick sheet (25 x 31 cm.); sunning to margins, with vertical fold-line at centre. Laid loose within the folded sheet: a facsimile of a holograph letter from Jones, dated February 1, 1976, expanding upon this fleshy music machine concept.

Living in Asolo at the time, an hour north of Padua, Fluxus musician Joe Jones worked with gallerist/publisher Rosanna Chiesi (i.e. Pari & Dispari) to organize a festival in 1977 in Reggio Emilia (Tendenze d'Arte Internazionali); an important event in the reception of both Fluxus and Viennese Actionism in Italy. Here Jones issues an invitation to potential collaborators for the music-machine performance he would deliver at said festival (People music), in which he proposed to use the measurements of persons' bodies to construct a series of anthropomorphic instruments, in a kind of musical physiognomy.

With no OCLC records discovered.

SOLD

Jones, Joe

Einladung zur Vernissage: Musikmaschinen.
Wiesbaden: Harlekin Art, 1977.
*****
Invitation (15 x 21 cm.), with recto fully-illustrated after black-and-white photograph of Jones in studio, with a dozen of his music machines hanging from ceiling. Slight bump; otherwise crisp and clean. Text to verso in German.

Large invitation postcard for a Joe Jones exhibition in Wiesbaden. Featured on verso: some reflections on Jones (and his Tone Deaf Music Co.) from Yoko Ono, translated into German from her liner notes to Fly (1971): "I was always fascinated by the idea of making special instruments for special emotions—instruments that lead us to emotions arrived by their own motions rather than by our control. With those instruments, I wanted to explore emotions and vibration which have not been explored as yet in music."

SOLD

Beuys, Joseph

Fondazione per la rinascita dell'agricoltura. [Invitation to discussion].
Pescara, Italy: Free International University, 1978.
100 USD
Two postcard invitations (10 x 14.5 cm.), fully-illustrated after photographs by Buby Durini. Printed to versos: event and contact information, along with captions for Durini photos. Minor edge-wear.

Providing the contact information for Beuys' patron and colleague Lucrezia De Domizio, these postcards announce an action of the Free International University in Pescara, a group discussion with Beuys and Vitantonio Russo (the "economic artist") on the question of land reform, spinning-off from Beuys' 100 days educational action at documenta 6. The images issue from a diptych captured by Buby Durini during those 100 days in Kassel, under the title Fondazione per la rinascita dell'agricoltura; being an exterior of the Museum Fridericianum, and an interior scene featuring many of the same subjects (along with Beuys' hat in foreground).

PURCHASE / INQUIRE

Moennig, Peter J. / Beuys, Joseph

"Maginot-transference." An environment-project...
New York: [Committee for the Real Estate Show], 1980.
150 USD
Xerographic broadside (28 x 22 cm.), illustrated after three photographs of New York City buildings. Crisp and clean, with minor signs of handling to margins.

At the end of 1979, a group of 35 "squatter-artists" occupied an abandoned city-owned building at 123 Delancey Street, to refurbish it as a gallery space for their Real estate show, which focused on the damaging effect of real estate speculation on the everyday life of New Yorkers, particularly in the Lower East Side. After their opening preview on January 1st, the artists returned on the 2nd to find that the building had been padlocked from the inside, along with their art, by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. On January 8th, with Joseph Beuys joining them, the group held a press conference outside of the building to try to pressure the HPD, but were held back by police; they eventually negotiated for an alternative space at 172 Delancey. Present here: an announcement for a follow-up show (Maginot-transference) from one of the members of the Committee for the Real Estate Show, the sculptor Peter J. Moennig. Under the bold headline "Plan to turn N.Y. into a bunker-city," Moennig ironically illustrates three strategies for the implosion of New York; e.g. "Office-buildings: alienation through cold design" / "Industrial plants: endangering us inhabitants" / "Neighbourhoods: burning down through speculation." For the original show, his contribution followed a similar aesthetic, as per the review in the East Village Eye: "Peter Moennig's facetious newspaper front-pages couch the truth about real estate and the Lower East Side in outrageous headlines accompanying actual news photos. 'Art code can be transformed into a language that can be spoken on the Lower East Side."

SOLD

Backworks / Flynt, Henry
Henry Flynt: exhibition, concert, lecture

New York: Backworks, 1982.
*****
Xerographic broadside (35.5 x 22 cm.); fold-lines from previous mailing, with postmarks and address to verso. Illustrated after iconic black-and-white photograph of Flynt.

From the final year of the influential Backworks project, owned by Barbara Moore and Jon Hendricks: an impressive series of events exploring the influence of Fluxus fellow-traveler Henry Flynt (see #11 above), with an exhibition (Concept art), catalogue (Fragments & reconstructions from a destroyed oeuvre, 1959-1963), lecture ("On concept art"), and concert at White Columns (Hallucinatory electric violin & solo rockabilly boogie pieces).

SOLD

Dupuy, Jean
Video ergo sum.

France, 1988.
1000 USD
Black acrylic paint on white square of cloth (19 x 22 cm.). Rough edges to three sides of cloth (as intended), with short tear to top-right corner (2 cm.); not affecting composition. Dupuy's name provided as anagram (YPUDU) via blue hand-stamp, followed by date in black ink.

Trading Paris for New York in 1967, Jean Dupuy took the opportunity to refashion his aesthetic, leaving behind his early pictorialism to explore the conceptual possibilities afforded by new media (especially video) and installation art. He achieved almost instantaneous success, winning the competition organized by E.A.T. (Experiments in Art & Technology), via which his Heart beats dust installation was included in MoMA’s classic 1968 exhibition The machine. By the 1970s, working closely with Maciunas during the late Fluxus period, he was curating collective performances (“shows collectif”) in his SoHo loft, with the likes of Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, Laurie Anderson, Claes Oldenburg, Charlemagne Palestine, Philip Glass, Gordon Matta-Clark, Richard Serra, and Carolee Schneemann. By 1984, Dupuy had crossed the Atlantic once more, retiring to southern France to embark on a new phase, in which he worked intimately with paint, cloth, and language; through the labyrinths of anagrams (much like Tristan Tzara at the end of his life) and the productivity of language disorders, such as stuttering and palialia. From this period: a series of language-paintings and installations emerged between 1988 and 1989, each of them repeating the same mantra—video ergo sum; our post-modern condition, summed-up in three words.

Of the present work from that series—with the mantra set within an abstraction of the TV screen—we have only discovered one other instance, at the Hood Museum of Art. NB: we have been unable to decipher the potential anagram hidden within this phrase (if it's indeed an anagram, as others of his painted cloths from this period). "Embourgeoised" is the closest match; it's missing the V.

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Shiomi, Mieko

A Fluxatlas.
New York: Reflux, 1993.
*****
Poetic map. Single sheet (36 x 84 cm.), folded and tipped onto card-stock portfolio (21.5 x 19 cm.), with string-and-button closure to verso. Front panel of portfolio illustrated with legend from the original iteration of this map. Signed and numbered in black ink by Shiomi, as no. 45 of 500 copies.

From the legend: "This is the record of various directions to which people were simultaneously moving or facing around 10 PM (Greenwich Time), October 15th, 1965." The original Fluxatlas (i.e. Spatial poem no. 2) first appeared in 1966; the result of Shiomi's invitation from the previous year to dozens of Fluxus colleagues, to take note of their bodies (and their actions or non-actions) at a specific moment of time-and-space. Shiomi would then chart the results onto this global map—providing a compelling snapshot of the Fluxus network, across all time-zones, in both its epicentres and its margins. For this re-issue by ReFlux Editions, Shiomi corrected the preservation challenge of the first edition, which was issued without an enclosing portfolio.

Plotted on this map are events performed in: London (Richard Hamilton, John J. Sharkey, Michael Horovitz, N. Chatterji), Gloucester (Sylvester Houédard), Leeds (Robin Page, Cavan McCarthy), Scotland (Ian Hamilton Finlay), Paris (Robert Bozzi), southern France (Robert Filliou, Marianne Staffeldt, Ben Vautier, Serge Oldenburg), Germany (Wolf Vostell), Amsterdam (Stanley Brouwn, Willem de Ridder), Berlin (Tomas Schmidt, Maruta Schmit, Ludwig Gosewitz), Copenhagen (Arthur Kopcke, Eric Andersen), Sweden (Bengt af Klintberg, Svante Bodin), Prague (Jiri Kolar, Herberta Masarykowa, Bohumila Grogerova), Milan (Paolo Castaldi), Tangier (Victor Musgrave), Tokyo (Akimichi Takeda, Kuniharu Akiyama, Chieko Shiomi), Los Angeles (Fred Lieberman), and from the grand epicentre of New York City (Joe Jones, Bob Watts, Alison Knowles, Ay-o, Dick Higgins, Adja Yunkers, George Maciunas, Barabara Moore, John Cage, Peter Hutchinson, Jonas Mekas, Esther Kaplan, Peter Moore, Diter Rot, Ben Patterson, etc.).

With 4 OCLC records discovered of this iteration in North America (MoMA, Iowa, SFMoMA, Banff).

SOLD

Shiomi, Mieko

Fluxus balance.
[Osaka?], 1993.
250 USD
Housed in tall cream portfolio (32 cm.), with two interior pockets; title blind-embossed to front panel. Hand-numbered to rear panel in black ink (as no. 145 of 750). Contents: (1) an illustrated sheet printed to glossy stock (22 x 31 cm.), with raised "Fluxus balance" label to bottom of the depicted scale; (2) Shiomi's artist statement, with names of contributors; (3) a set of three washers and string in transparent plastic pouch (10 x 6 cm.) with title-sheet affixed to front ("Weights for adjusting the balance"); (4) and four sets of illustrated response cards (5.5 x 8.5 cm.), totaling 68, printed recto-only on peach paper, including the contributor's name, their choice of object, and an image. Accompanied by later postcard invitation for an exhibition at Galerie Hundertmark (Feb. 13 to Mar. 3, 1998), which features an image of the Balance poem to recto.

"Similar to the Spatial poem series (1965-1975) this Fluxus balance is another anonymous poem (1991-1992) using the mail as the medium. People received the following invitation: 'Write down in one of the squares on the Balance what you want to balance with something which another person wants to balance. It can be either an object/s or a concept, indicating or not indicating its weight.' Of course, nobody knew what other people would offer. Different from Spatial poem, which was merely a panorama, the Fluxus balance is a kind of conceptual game which everybody can play afterwards. There have been 68 contributions sent back which turned out to amazingly reflect each person's spirit. You can enjoy making pairs either by choice or by chance."

Participants included: Eric Andersen, Ay-O, George Brecht, Giuseppe Chiari, Jean Dupuy, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Barbara Moore, Pauline Oliveros, Knud Pedersen, Clive Phillpot, Harry Ruhe, Carolee Schneemann, Gilbert Silverman, Daniel Spoerri, and Ben Vautier.

With only 3 OCLC records discovered (Getty, Bard, and Banff).

SOLD

Filliou, Robert

L'histoire chuchotée de l’art / Whispered art history.
Sauve, France: Clémence Hiver Éditeur, 1995.
350 USD
A clever tête-bêche construction, with oblong orange papered boards (11 x 16 cm.) featuring alternating French & English titles printed to gold foil sheets affixed to either board. Contents: [68] pages formed from continuous leaf, folded leporello-style, with French and English texts respectively-printed recto/verso. Black ribbons affixed to boards in "crossing" pattern, allowing this artist book to be opened alternately in its English and French versions, i.e. without folding-out into full accordion.

A posthumously-published iteration of Filliou’s 1963 work Whispered art history, in which he celebrated "Art’s birthday" through the narration of 12 invented stories from the million year history of artistic practice, as recorded on 12 three-minute-long juke-box discs. In 1970, these texts found their first published form in the collaborative book Teaching and learning… The present iteration, with copyright attributed to Filliou’s wife Marianne, qualified as the first French translation of the work, by Anne-Marie Hui Bon Hoa. With only 3 OCLC records discovered in North America

Concluding with a poignant memorial text from Filliou’s daughter Marcelline, who continues her father's eternal rhythm: "Three years ago, the 2nd of December 1987, / a man died sitting in his bed. / Who that man was is not important. / Because art is alive. / I mean, let's keep names out of this. / As I was saying, / his breath stopped. / Have you ever tried to watch your breathing / and imagine the day it will stop? / Where does it go? / Daddy, I love you."

SOLD

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