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

 

Robert Watts | Notes and Sketches 1964-1966

Robert Watts

Notes and Sketches 1964-1966

Verona, Italy: Edizioni Francesco Conz, 1979

53 × 37 × 4 cm.

Edition of 130 [+ 15 AP] signed and numbered copies

A silkscreened clothbound portfolio case containing silkscreens on paper comprising a colophon, an introduction by the artist, and twenty drawings each hand-coloured in crayon by the artist. 

Each print is signed and numbered and the collection is signed by artist Larry Miller, who manages the Watts estate. One hundred sets are numbered with Arabic numbers and thirty with Roman numerals. There are an additional fifteen artist proofs. 

The collection was published by Francesco Conz, in collaboration with Rosanna Chiessi.

Larry Miller, Bern Porter, Carolee Schneemann | Performing Objects

Larry Miller, Bern Porter, Carolee Schneemann

Performing Objects

New York City, USA: Robert J. Shiffler Foundation, 1993

31.8 × 24.1 × 1.3 cm

Edition of 1200

As a fan of all three artists, I once owned this box (from Printed Matter? Art Metropole?) but can't locate it now. I suspect the box got flattened in transit and I tossed it, keeping only the contents. As the taped edges in the above image indicates, it was probably a common fate for the publication. 

The box functions as an exhibition catalogue for a three-person show at the Contemporary Arts Center, in Cincinnati. Alongside a staple-bound exhibition catalogue, each artist contributed a printed multiple: 

Larry Miller, Genetic Code Copyright, 1992, Printed Certificate with Gold Tone Foil Seal, 8.5 x 11". Designed to allow the buyer to copyright their genetic code. 

Carolee Schneemann, Index Codex, 1992, Halftone Print on Paper, 10 x 16.5"

Bern Porter, Found Tools, 1970-1990, 4.88 x 2.88". An envelope containing five letterpress prints. 

Larry Miller | Discourse on All & Everything

Larry Miller

Discourse on All & Everything

Easton, USA: Williams Center for the Arts, Lafayette College

17 x 11" 

Edition size unknown

Poster for a performance at Lafayette College, April 15, 1991. The work is an updated version of a performance Miller gave eleven years prior at The Kitchen, in NYC.

The event was advertised as "the first in a series of performances about coping with the fantasies, fears and paradoxes of everyday existence". The event featured hypnosis, prerecorded audio as well as slide, video and film projection.

Richard Nonas

Post-Minimalist sculptor Richard Nonas died Tuesday, at the age of eighty-five. 

Initially trained as an anthropologist, Nonas discovered sculpture accidentally, while walking in the park and picking up some wood to throw for his dog to fetch. He crossed two sticks, one in each hand, and realized that there might be infinite ways of doing this and therefore infinite ways to create infinite forms and infinite spaces. 

He discovered that the variations conveyed “strong and specific emotion” and took the pieces home to play around with. “A couple of months later,” Nonas would recall, “a friend came to my apartment and said, ‘Idiot, that’s called art.’”

Prior to this, Nonas studied literature and social anthropology and spent nearly a decade conducting field work among Native American populations in Northern Ontario and the Yukon in Canada, as well as in Mexico, and the American Southwest. 

Nonas became involved with the groundbreaking SoHo artist-run gallery 112 Greene Street, alongside contemporaries including Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark, Richard Serra, Alan Saret, Tina Girouard, Suzanne Harris, Jene Highstein and Larry Miller. 

His gallery, Fergus McCaffrey, which announced the news, did not indicate a cause of death. 

The Bonotto Foundation

The Bonotto Foundation was established in the summer of 2013 in order to promote the Luigi Bonotto Collection and "aims at developing a new way of relating between art, business and contemporary culture at the international level."

Bonotto made his money in the textile business (see below image of Kanye West visiting the plant to examine samples) and has amassed a collection of artists' books and editions that is one of the most impressive private holdings in the world. In addition to unique works and editions, the collection contains ephemera and documentation, including periodicals, exhibition invitations, brochures and posters.

Bonotto's close friendship with many of the artists he collects means the archive also contains commissioned works, personal correspondence, and drafts for published and unpublished artists'  books and catalogues.

One of the Foundation’s main objectives is to open the collection up to curators, so that the works may be displayed publicly. To that end, a new exhibition titled Fluxbooks: From The Sixties to The Future, opens next month in Venice [see next post].

For more information, visit the foundation's site, here.

Bonotto is pictured above: with some works from the collection, at Ben Vautier's home, with Yoko Ono, with the late Dick Higgins, Anne Tardos, Geoffrey Hendricks, Jonas Mekas, Larry Miller, Richard Kostelanetz, Ben Patterson, Alison Knowles and Harry Ruhe.

The lunatics are on the loose …

[Fluxus]
The lunatics are on the loose … 
Postdam, Germany: Down With Art!, 2013
592 pp., 24 x 17 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown

This elaborate publication accompanies the exhibitions "European Fluxus Festivals, 1962-1977" in seven different venues curated by Petra Stegmann, with Peter van der Meijden, Henar Rivière Rìos, Heike Roms and Caroline Ugelstad (see exhibition poster, below).

Stegmann edits the volume which features texts by the above curators as well as Jennifer Burkard, Myriam Kroll, Susanne Rennert and Vanja Sisek.

"Artistic contributions" are made by Eric Andersen, Philip Corner, Alison Knowles,  Larry Miller, Ann Noël, Ben Patterson, Tamas St.Turba, and Jarosław Kozłowski (the red Errata, above). The cover of the title features an image of Emmett Williams and Willem de Ridder performing Robert Filliou’s “13 Ways of Using Emmett Williams’s Skull”.

The book can be ordered through ego@inarcadia.de for €42.00.

A youtube video, here, illustrates some of the finicky production, such as tipped-in and tied-in (often oversized) content, and pages that require folding to read (which feels somewhat more Mad Magazine than it does Fluxus).