George Maciunas

Fluxus manifesto, 1963

George Maciunas (November 8, 1931 – May 9, 1978) was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He was a founding member and the central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers.

Quotes

• Purge the world of bourgeois sickness, ‘intellectual’, professional & commercialized culture ... PROMOTE A REVOLUTIONARY FLOOD AND TIDE IN ART, ... promote NON ART REALITY to be grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes and professionals ... FUSE the cadres of cultural, social & political revolutionaries into united front & action."
  • Maciunas (1963), Fluxus Manifesto, copies of which were thrown into the audience at the Festum Fluxorum Fluxus, Düsseldorf, February 1963.

• Never lend Paik a television. He destroys all televisions.
  • Milan Knizak, quoted in Mr. Fluxus, p.245

• If you are really short of $ I could send you some (after my next pay, since I have spent my resent pay 99%). Wait another 5 days, I will send some – don't starve meanwhile. Eat grass mixed with chopped leather belt and boiled old shoes – it's vitamin and protein rich. – That's what the Russian guerillas used to eat.
  • Maciunas, letter to Emmet Williams, October 1963 (quoted in Mr. Fluxus, p.106).

Quotes about George Maciunas

• The Fluxus movement... developed its 'anti-art', anti-commercial aesthetics under the leadership of George Maciunas. Fluxus staged a series of festivals in Paris, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London and New York, with avant-garde performances often spilling out into the street. Most of the experimental artists of the period, including Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik, took part in Fluxus events. The movement, which still continues, played an important role in the opening up of definitions of what art can be.
  • Anon. "Nam June Paik: Section 2: Fluxus, Performance, Participation", Tate Online, n.d.