Flux Core

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Maciunas conceived the name 'Fluxus' for a publication covering Lithuanian Culture during a meeting of Lithuanian émigrés, but Fluxus soon developed into an avant-garde movement characterized by playful subversion of previous art traditions. In 1963, Maciunas composed the first Fluxus Manifesto, which called upon its readers to 'purge the world of bourgeois sickness, intellectual, professional & commercialized culture' and 'PROMOTE A REVOLUTIONARY FLOOD AND TIDE IN ART.' Shared by its sibling art movements pop art and minimalism, Fluxus expressed a countercultural sentiment to the value of art, distinctly achieved by its commitment to collectivism and to decommodifying and deaestheticizing art. Maciunas' lifelong interest in diagrams made him chart the political, cultural and social history as well as art history and the chronology of Fluxus.

In Their Own Story

In 1961, Maciunas opened the AG Gallery at 925 Madison Avenue with fellow Lithuanian Almus Salcius, intending to finance the gallery's ambitious programme of events and exhibitions by importing delicatessen foods and rare musical instruments. The gallery, though short-lived (it closed on July 30 due to lack of funds), held exhibits and performance art events by many of his new acquaintances. To avoid debt collectors, Maciunas took a job as a civilian graphic designer at a U.S. Air Force base in Wiesbaden, Germany in late 1961. It was there that he organized the first Fluxus Festival in September 1962, featuring various 'concerts' and scripted actions performed by Fluxus artists. One of the most notorious events performed at Wiesbaden was Maciunas' interpretation of Philip Corner's Piano Activities, where the piano was completely destroyed—an event considered scandalous enough to appear on German television four times.

Reader's Guide

After his contract with the US Airforce was terminated due to chronic illness, Maciunas returned to New York in September 1963. He established the official Fluxus Headquarters at 359 Canal Street in New York City and proceeded to make Fluxus into a sort of multinational corporation, replete with 'a complex amalgam of Fluxus Products from the FluxShop and the Flux Mail-Order Catalogue and Warehouse, Fluxus copyright protection, a collective newspaper, a Flux Housing Cooperative and frequently revised lists of incorporated Fluxus workers.' During this time, Maciunas was assembling Fluxus boxes and Flux-Kits, small boxes containing cards and objects designed and assembled by artists such as Christo, Yoko Ono, and George Brecht. The first one to be planned was Fluxus 1, a wooden box filled with artworks by most of Maciunas' colleagues, though production difficulties pushed its publication date to 1964.

Did You Know?

• Maciunas studied art, graphic design, and architecture at Cooper Union, architecture and musicology at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and art history at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, specializing in the European and Siberian art of migrations.
• He began a correspondence with Raoul Hausmann, an original member of Berlin Dada, who advised him to stop using 'neo-dada' and concentrate instead on 'Fluxus' to describe the nascent movement.
• Maciunas estimated spending 'about $50,000' on Fluxus projects over the years that would never recoup their investment.
• The Fluxus shop on Canal Street, opened in 1964, did not make a single sale in an entire year—not even a 50 cent postage stamp sheet.
• Maciunas' first art-history chart measured 6 by 12 feet, a time/space chart categorizing all past styles, movements, schools, and artists between 1955 and 1960.