>From MOMA or http://www.artcommotion.com/Issue2/VisualArts/

The Fluxus Movement

by Peter Frank
The Fluxus movement emerged in New York around 1960, then it took root in
Europe, and eventually in its way to Japan. The movement encompassed a new
aesthetic that had already appeared on three continents. That aesthetic
encompasses a reductive gesturality, part Dada, part Bauhaus and part Zen,
and presumes that all media and all artistic disciplines are fair game for
combination and fusion. Fluxus presaged avant-garde developments over the
last 40 years.
Fluxus objects and performances are characterized by minimalist but often
expansive gestures based in scientific, philosophical, sociological, or
other extra-artistic ideas and leavened with burlesque.
Yoko Ono is the best-known individual associated with Fluxus, but many
artists have associated themselves with Fluxus since its emergence. In the
'60s, when the Fluxus movement was most active, artists all over the globe
worked in concert with a spontaneously generated but carefully maintained
Fluxus network. Since then, Fluxus has endured not so much as a movement but
as a sensibility--a way of fusing certain radical social attitudes with
ever--evolving aesthetic practices. Initially received as little more than
an international network of pranksters, the admittedly playful artists of
Fluxus were, and remain, a network of radical visionaries who have sought to
change political and social, as well as aesthetic, perception



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