This is not an original thought, but it strikes me that the difference between the modernists and the post-war avantgarde is that the former were concerned with the integral unity or the purity of the artistic object. (E.g., Tschichold talks about the new typography as considering "the blank white spaces on the paper as formal elements just as much as the areas of black type") while the later emphasized that the artistic object existed in a context... or that it was not really an "object", but a temporary and temporal objectification of a process or activity that is more fundamental or constitutive of "art". ...and that it was communicating this activity that was most important... I remember too from our discussions on this list that Dick Higgins was a big fan of Moholy-Nagy... so there was a lot of overlap and continuity of interest ... but also a change in emphasis >I think Rod summarized the falling out between Jorn and Bill >nicely (see Raiding the Icebox by Peter Wollen for more about the >specific disagreement' or, Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces for >overview of Letterist activities) ... and Eric's mention of >StereoLab's work reminds me of how Jorn has (finally) got his day >in the contemporary zeitgeist ... My thought is that Fluxus >publications reflect an interest in both the Concrete poetry (that >grew from Max Bill's theory of concrete art) and concrete actions >(that is similar to work that arose from Jorn and others). I have >found some tangential connections between Fluxus folks and >Letterists (etc), but nothing really literal (any avtual >connections -- letters/collaborations/meetings? -- that anyone >might know about between Fluxus and CoBrA). Craig Saper > > >
