Eric Andersen wrote:
It is amazing how especially German art history has manipulated lots of peopleI agree with Eric. But I wonder that anybody thinks that Beuys was a central figure in the Flux network. Well, I really don't know if that's the view from USA but I think that from here, in Europe, it's very clear that for Beuys "Fluxus" was only another tool he used to develop his own project, althought he and some other Fluxus artists met in some festivals.
to believe that Joseph Beuys was a central figure in the Flux network. In fact,
there was not much contact. And Beuys' Selbstdarstellung, Shamanism and
metaphysics are really quite opposite worlds to intermedia.Eric Andersen
Some comments by Beuys himself:
"...I link only externaly, for organization, but not conceptually,
with the neodadaists, with the Fluxus people, who was working, most of
them, in the field of Dadá, and at the same time, I developed my
own concept of Fluxus, independently of dadaism and neodadaism..."
It seems that the use of the word Fluxus allowed Beuys to extend his own ideas during a time, through some festivals in Germany (as in "Festum Fluxorum - Fluxus" in Dusseldorf). He use only as propaganda and within the context of his own ideas and conceptual background. After the mid sixties, references to Fluxus or Flux in the title of his works became rare.
(In another hand, it's interesting to observe that after this period, when Beuys use the term Fluxus for a work, this work is linked with music or acoustic elements and most of the cases, with compositions by Henning Christiansen, as in MANRESA or in Eurasientab 82 min fluxorum organum).
