John Lennon | Piece for George Maciunas Who Can't Distinguish Between These Colors

John Lennon

Piece for George Maciunas Who Can't Distinguish Between These Colors

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1971

12 x 24 x 2.5 cm.

Edition size unknown (only prototypes may exist)

Little is known about this work. It was never advertised in any of the Fluxus newsletters or mentioned in Maciunas' prolific correspondence (unlike countless other editions which were proposed but never materialized). However at least two copies exist: one in the Getty collection and other in the legendary Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus collection, now housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. 

The work is proposed as a gift to Maciunas (who was colour blind) but the typewritten card displays the hallmarks of his design, suggesting it was intended as a Fluxus edition. [The Independent claims that the card was typed by Lennon]

The piece is very poorly documented, with only the above closed colour image from the MoMa and the black & white thumbnail available. 

"It was typical, perhaps even symptomatic that he used only black and white. He saw the world in sharp, moral terms, not in moderated shades of gray. Awake to the myriad logic forks in a chess game, he was insensitive to the hundreds of thousands of colors that human eyes distinguish. Someone once told me that George was color-blind. Perhaps it was true. If so, I can understand it.”

- Ken Friedman

George Maciunas | Fluxpost (Aging Men)

George Maciunas

Fluxpost (Aging Men)

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1975

27.8 x 21.5 cm.

Edition size unknown

Less well known than his later set of postage stamps titled Smiles (1975), this offset work on perforated gummed paper consists of a forty-two portraits of men. The image originates in a flea market photograph depicting more than a hundred members of the Eastern Synod, attending their 159th annual meeting at St. John’s Reformed Church, Williamsport, Pennsylvania, October 24th, 1905 [below].

Maciunas discarded half of the portraits and arranged the remaining in order of their imagined age (which seems to be based entirely on the amount of facial hair each sports). 

The stamps were produced by Fluxus and also appeared in Fluxpack 3 [above, centre]. The work is included in numerous collections, including the Whitney and MoMA. 

Yoko Ono | Instruction Paintings

Yoko Ono

Instruction Paintings

New York City, USA/Tokyo, Japan: Weatherhill, 1995

63 pp., 18.5 x 18.5 cm., slipcase

Edition size unknown

One of the earliest books on Ono to focus (retrospectively) on a single body of work, this title documents an exhibition of Ono's at George Maciunas' AG Gallery in New York. The title features six illustrations of the works and the text (in both English and Japanese) to the Instruction Paintings: Painting to the See the Skies, Painting for the Wind, Painting in Three Stanzas, Painting to Shake Hands, Painting for Burial, Smoke Painting, Painting to See the Room, Painting to Hammer a Nail, Waterdrop Painting, Painting to Let the Evening Light Go Through, Painting To Be Constructed in Your Head (5 versions), Painting Until it Becomes Marble, A + B Painting (2 versions), Portrait of Mary, Painting to Enlarge and See, Painting for a Broken Sewing Machine, and Painting to be Constructed in Your Head.

In the six-page introductory text Ono is quite candid about her first marriages (to composer Toshi Ichiyanagi and later to film producer Tony Cox) and about a brief stay in a clinic during a bout of depression.

Photographs by George Maciunas and cover design by Ono.

"PAINTING TO BE CONSTRUCTED IN YOUR HEAD

Imagine a flower made ofhard material such as gold, silver, stainless steel, tin, marble, copper, etc. Imagine it so that you can count each of the thousand petals of the flower. Imagine that the petals suddenly become soft like cotton, or like living flesh. In three hours, pick all the petals. Save one and press it in a book. In the margin oft he page where the flower is pressed, note the derivation of the petal and the name of the petal. At least eight hours should be spent for the construction of the painting.”

- Yoko Ono

Geoffrey Hendricks | Flux Divorce Box

Geoffrey Hendricks

Flux Divorce Box

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1973

11 × 51 × 37 cm.

Edition size unknown

Ten years into their marriage, Geoff and Bici Hendricks mutually revealed to each other that they were gay, and separated. They remained close friends, and Bici Forbes Hendricks changed their name to Nye Ffarrabas. 

Flux Divorce Box documents the couple’s joyous divorce.  All of their shared belongings were ceremouneously sliced in two. Items from their decade-long marriage - including documents, clothing, a love seat, and their marital bed - were cut in half with scissors, a paper cutter, an ax, and a power saw.

Housed in a box crafted by a woodworking graduate student, Flux Divorce Box includes "Our Flux Divorce" which resembles a wedding album bisected horizontally. Fragments of coats, barbed wire, plastic, correspondence cut in half, and half of a wedding announcement are also included. 

The documentation of the performative event is by Fluxus photographer Peter Moore. The work was distributed through Fluxus newsletters and price lists (initially offered for $300), and George Maciunas assisted with the design. His invitation to the couple’s divorce features a graphic that had previously been used on Ken Friedman’s Flux Corsage, from 1968. It too is sliced in half. 

When Maciunas married in 1978, Hendricks officiated (in a clerical robe) and the event can almost be viewed as the inversion of his divorce. Hendricks told Lars Movin "Early in 1978 while George Maciunas was battling terminal cancer, he said to me "Geoff, we had your "Flux Divorce", we should also have a "Flux Wedding". He wanted to have a Flux Wedding with Billie Hutching, who he was with, and he wanted me to be 'minister’."

I visited Hendricks’ home in the nineties and he showed me this extraordinary work. I asked how many were produced and he replied “ Not a lot. They were all hand done. There's one in the Silverman collection, there's one in the Jean Brown collection that's now in the Getty. Francesco Conz has one, Barbara Moore. Not many more than that.”

I recall him showing me images of the Maciunas wedding, including one of a chair that had been sliced in half and then tied back together again, reinforcing the idea of marriage as an inverse to a divorce. 

The above copy of Flux Divorce Box is from the Conz collection, and differs in size slightly from the one that MoMA acquired (the dimensions of which are listed as 39.7 x 50.6 x 10.5 cm., see below). 

From an Oral history interview with Geoffrey Hendricks, 2016 August 17-18:

GEOFFREY HENDRICKS: With our 10th wedding anniversary coming along, it was like, How do we celebrate it? Because we were both, you know, queer and involved with others, and I just sort of tossed out the idea, what about a Flux-divorce? And it sort of resonated, and I said, "Let me talk to George Maciunas." And so I talked to George. He was absolutely thrilled and so he did a lot of the orchestrating of it, and figuring out how to divide up the house with a wall of cardboard boxes to separate one half of the room. For another, barbed wire between the living room and the kitchen island in the middle of the—before the dining room.

[...]

And then upstairs in the bedroom, we had a division of property and with a paper cutter, we cut our wedding document in half, the wedding invitation, some correspondence that was sort of symbolic. And then with, I guess, a utility knife, cut the mattress in half with scissors and ripped the sheets in half. And then I had this circular saw and cut the wooden platform of the bed in half. And there was a wicker loveseat that I chopped in half. So this was the division of property and we tore our wedding garments in half.

LINDA YABLONSKY: Was this documented?

GEOFFREY HENDRICKS: There's some documentation of it.

LINDA YABLONSKY: Photographs or video?

GEOFFREY HENDRICKS: Yeah, Peter Moore took photographs. And there are maybe some others. I don't know that there's video, but then I made a Flux–Divorce Box so that I have this as an object. And there are copies of it in, I guess, in MoMA and the Getty and the Sohm [Archive] collection in Stuttgart, and sort of, you know, there may be half a dozen key Fluxus collection series.

LINDA YABLONSKY: It sounds like it sets quite a precedent for Gordon Matta-Clark.

GEOFFREY HENDRICKS: [Laughs.] Yeah, right, well—

LINDA YABLONSKY: Remember he split the house—

GEOFFREY HENDRICKS: Oh, yeah, no, I know.

Takako Saito | Grinder Chess

Takako Saito

Grinder Chess

New York City, USA: ReFlux, nd

17 x 17 x 7.2 cm.

Edition of 19 signed and numbered copies

I can't think of another artist who has made as many great chess board variations as Takako Saito. Her disrupted sets include games in which you identify your pieces by scent, taste, weight and sound, as well as Book Chess (1980), Nut & Bolt Chess (1964) and even wearable chess sets. 

Grinder Chess isn't as conceptually strong as some of the others, but its formally great - drill bits reimagined as soldiers. The piece may be a pun on the chess term "grinder", which refers to a player with an unassuming style. 

The work is designed by George Maciunas, who predatory drawing is below. 

Fluxus Preview Review (Fluxroll)

George Maciunas

Fluxus Preview Review (Fluxroll)

Köln-Mülheim, Germany: Fluxus, 1963

167 x 10 cm., scroll

Edition size unknown

An early Fluxus publication/advertisement that featured an announcement for the Fluxyearboxes, Fluxus actions by Eric Andersen, Robert Filliou, Dick Higgins, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Alison Knowles,

Takehisa Kosugi, Arthur Koepcke, Jackson Mac Low, Jonas Mekas, Nam June Paik, Tomas. Schmit, Daniel Spoerri, Robert Watts, Emmett Williams, George Brecht, Ben Vautier, Yoko Ono and others. 

Designed and published by George Maciunas, the work features three glossy white paper leaves (printed on recto and verso) glued together and rolled. 

“In 10 days | will mail several copies of the new Fluxus prospectus — which includes past press reviews, photos of performances, several short fluxus compositions (including your own — kick in the posterior certificate), plus Fluxus schedule of publications and the make-up of the committee [...] | will bring about 1000 of these prospectuses with me (they are like posters & can be pasted about the town)."

- George Maciunas, in a letter to Tomas Schmit

"Fluxus Preview Review, a preview of the “Re-view” (Anthology) Fluxus, served as a kind of first Fluxus newspaper and propaganda vehicle. It contains a definition of the word FLUXUS, a list of the Editorial committee, advertisements for Fluxus Yearboxes and Fluxus product, scores by a number of Fluxus artists and photographs of performances. George Maciunas, who edited and designed the work, took its format from the November 1961 publication Kalender Rolle, edited by Ebeling and Dietrich in Wuppertal, West Germany [see below]."

- Jon Hendricks, Fluxus Codex

Ay-O | Flux Rain Machine

Ay-O

Flux Rain Machine

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1965

12 x 9.5 x 2.5 cm.

Edition size unknown

Produced around the same time as Hans Haacke’s Condensation Cube (see below), Flux Rain Machine functions similarly: water sealed inside the plastic box condenses to form droplets. Versions advertised in Fluxus newsletters are more likely to have been made-to-order larger versions, even closer in design to Haacke's, given their price range of between $50 and $200. 

The label - as with all Fluxus editions - is designed by George Maciunas (see above). Both examples are from the MoMA collection in NYC. 

James Riddle | E.S.P. Fluxkit

James Riddle

E.S.P. Fluxkit

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1966

3.5 x 4.75 x .75 cm.

Edition size unknown

A plastic box with a George Maciunas designed label containing a number of coloured cards. An instruction sheet reads: “DOP Instructions/Blindfold yourself securely and rub your fingers lightly over the colored papers. With practice you can learn to distinguish between the colors.”

In a letter to Paul Sharits dated July 1966, Maciunas wrote “Fluxus has no position on [William S.] Burroughs or psychedelics. Jim Riddle (a flux man) is very interested in psychedelics, ESP, LSD, etc. has done two Flux events last summer. One was ESP event across the country (by mail). Interesting results. [Brion] Gysin piece included for itself, not for his position on junk”.  

Jon Hendricks' Fluxus Codex notes that E.S.P. Fluxkit was "issued as an individual edition, and is a component of some Fluxkits and most copies of Flux Year Box 2”. It was also produced as an envelope edition (see earlier post, here, and below). 

The work - which originally was offered for sale for $3.00 - is held in numerous collections, including the Walker, MoMA, The University of Iowa Libraries, and Harvard Art Museum.