George Maciunas | Venus de Milo apron

George Maciunas

Venus de Milo apron

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1973

75.7 × 40.3 cm.

Edition of 1000

The quintessential example of what George Maciunas defined as “functionalism” (see below) is a vinyl kitchen apron screen-printed with an image of the Venus de Milo, or Aphrodite of Melos. 

The work was originally intended for Implosions, Inc., a business set up by Maciunas and Robert Watts, and was co-credited to the pair. Implosions was a Fluxus offshoot designed to generate income for the group, and Maciunas excitedly wrote to Ken Friedman that these could be produced for fifty cents each and that they might raise funds by selling the them “to a large beer company”. 

The work was then slated to be included in the third Fluxus Yearbox. This was originally conceived of as a flat package of games, postage stamps, placemats, stationery and wearable goods, before the eventual format of a cardboard tube was decided upon (see below). 

By 1972, Maciunas had arranged with the editor of Flash Art magazine to produce the project, which then found its way into the hands of Gino Di Maggio's Multhipla imprint. 

 

According to Gwen Allen, Maciunas proposed to produce Fluxpack 3 in an edition of a thousand, but only a handful of copies were assembled. The Fluxus Codex makes no mention of this, but its scarcity bears Allen out. MoMA owns a copy (from the Silverman collection - the most comprehensive collection of Fluxus objects ever assembled) and there is also one in the impressive holdings of the Bonnato Foundation. I could locate no copies available for sale.  

“[F]unctionalism I would describe as follows: That's when the piece that you are doing has an inherent connection to the form, you know, so to give you example: we did the whole series of aprons. A non-functional apron would be to print some flowers on it. Okay? Now that has nothing to do with the fact that it's an apron or the fact that you wear it on top of your body. Right?

Let’s say you print McLuhan’s face on it, or Beatles or whatever is popular, you know. It has nothing to do with the fact that it's an apron or that you are wearing on top of your stomach. Okay, now that I would call non-functionalism. I wasn't interested in that. I was interested in functionalism so therefore when I came and designed aprons I designed aprons that had something to do with the shape that was going to cover you. So, for instance one version was Venus de Milo, both sides blown up so that when you covered your, from neck to knee, you were covered with this Venus de Milo - photographic image. Okay. Or another apron was image of a stomach right on top of your stomach. So, I would call that functionalism.”

- George Maciunas, interviewed by Larry Miller