Rethinking the Fluxmanifesto

Journal Entry: Monday, April 22, 2024

George Maciunas was a Lithuanian American artist founder of Fluxus

I was rereading the Fluxmanifesto. It seemed like a good idea, but as history has proven since then, anything is collectable and can become a commodity even things intentionally intended to thwart being commodified or institutionalized. Which is interesting.

The whole critique of the presumed strategy about ‘the artist doing art’ at the end of the manifesto is based on misguided and misunderstood assumptions and disparages the artists and draws illogical and demeaning conclusions and thus encouraging artists down a dead end trail that leads only to mediocrity. The aim of art is not to aspire to the commonplace or to consider Average as the summit.

Appreciating the commonplace, appreciating everything in fact, is a worthy goal. An artist should be able to gaze upon the entire world with wonder, amazement and sense of humor and not divide things into beautiful and ugly or worthy and unworthy.

There is water from a free drinking fountain on the one hand and water in a bottle for 3.00 bucks on the other hand. There is the public interest of the 'everyman' and there is the private interests of the individual - the collector and market, the artists and the free exchange of ideas among themselves. It all coexists together. A better strategy is to engage with the whole ecosystem.

Everything is actually free. It is just a matter of what it costs to get it in your hands.

Example: If I want a big boulder I saw in the mountains in my front yard, that is free if I can roll it from the mountain to my front yard by myself. But if I want a dude with a crane and a truck and a couple of helpers to get some gas and take the time to put wear and tear on their expensive equipment, use the road system to go and get it and then bring it and place it in my yard with the equipment and the very long chain of various other unaccounted for costs, taxes and whatnot, that project is going to cost a lot of money so the boulder in my front yard might end up costing a couple of thousand or more bucks. BUT the boulder itself was free. To go through all that trouble and expense is some version of the artist’s desire to fulfill his creative vision. I could have just been happy with my memory of the boulder or a photo of it. But that would not satisfy my creative desires.

Once in my yard, I might decide it could be cool to draw a shape suggested by the stone and then to hire a carver to come to my boulder and carve my sketch into the stone Isamu Noguchi style. That cost a bunch more money and on top of that, I am losing part of the stone by cutting it up but maybe, with a couple of adjustments those leftovers could be cool in my house as smaller sculptures.

I live with it a few years and it becomes famous to the neighbors and some rich dude comes to see it, loves it and wants to buy it for his yard. After all my time and effort, I figure it is worth at least $100,000 to me to give up my favorite thing and another $25,000 to move it and place it in the rich dude's yard. He says "Yeah! I love it!" and pays me the money but then I don't have my rock anymore. But wait…

Then I think "Hum... Now I can afford to take this money and go out and find another boulder that I like and start all over. Could be fun! I did see another boulder I liked and do have more design ideas inspired by my first effort. I can probably make an even bigger and better one."

And there you go - the artist and the collector market. They depend on each other. No reason to work against it. Just don't get confused. The main thing is being creative and making the art you want to see and having the time and means to do it. Simple.

I know George Maciunas is really reacting to the seemingly degenerate whoopla and glitz surrounding the high end of the art market and there are legitimate criticisms to be made about that exclusivity-oriented crème de la crème culture but that is really just the smoke, mirrors and klieg lights theater of the collector’s market and those who serve them, not the artists themselves. Some artists play into it and maybe even get lost in it. It is, however, just a slice of the whole ecosystem that is its own form of entertainment leaving most of the creative community to go quietly about its business.