Robert Watts | Events

Robert Watts

Events

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Fluxus, 1964

13 x 15 x 2 cm.

Edition size unknown

Given my fairly limited budget, I've been able to amass a decent sized collection of Fluxus books and multiples over the years. The image below, taken about a decade ago for my One For Me And One To Share book, illustrates a dozen boxed works from my collection, and there's probably another dozen since. 

This is the first I've been able to acquire that is not a Reflux edition, meaning a continuation from George Maciunas' archives, by Barbara Moore, who ran his estate after his 1978 death. She used his existing materials to keep the editions in print, as the unlimited editions they were always intended to be, thus preventing them from becoming over-priced collectables available only to a limited number of people. 

Of course, when Reflux wrapped up its operations, the continued editions began to sell for the same prices that the originals once fetched. The originals increased in value, also, but today their prices are not dissimilar. 

Robert Watts' Events is a white cardboard box with stapled corners and a George Maciunas designed label. Enclosed are a varying number of printed cards. This version was produced by Willem de Ridder for the Fluxus European Mail-Order House, that he ran out of Amsterdam. 

The cardboard box versions were either less common than their plastic counterparts, or they were more likely to perish and are therefore more scarce. Later editions were sometimes accompanied by other objects, such as postage stamps or rubber fruit.