Emmett Williams

Emmett Williams would have turned 87 today. The Fluxus artist and poet died in 2007, in Berlin, where he had lived since 1980.

Williams was living in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1962 when he began correspondence with Fluxus impresario George Maciunas. Shortly afterwards he began participating in performances and contributing to Fluxus publications.

“When I have exhibitions, I do not say I am a Fluxus artist, I say it is my work,” he said in an interview with Umbrella magazine in March 1998. “And that makes me very comfortable. And it’s nice to outlive descriptive titles like that.” Many of his works, though, continued to use the Fluxus name, including his 1992 autobiography My Life in Flux and Vice Versa and the 2006 title A Flexible History of Fluxus Facts & Fictions.

Williams is pictured above with Yoko Ono and Ay-O.