FLUXUS: Selections from the gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection
November 17, 1988 – March 10, 1989
The Fluxus movement is the subject of an exhibition of publications, multiples, and objects opening at The Museum of Modern Art on November 17, 1988. On display in the Museum’s Library until March 10, 1989, FLUXUS: SELECTIONS FROM THE GILBERT AND LILA SILVERMAN COLLECTION is organized by Clive Phillpot, director of the Library, in collaboration with Jon Hendricks, curator of the Silverman Collection. In conjunction with the exhibition, a program of Fluxus films will be shown on November 14 and 15 (film program attached).
Drawn from the preeminent Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection of Fluxus material, the exhibition features works by George Brecht, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Daniel Spoerri, and Ben Vautier, among others. It includes such diverse records as instruction drawings, correspondence, notations, photographs, prototypes, and films.
Fluxus is considered one of the most radical and experimental art movements of the sixties. The name was invented by Maciunas for a magazine that was in production for three years before it finally appeared in 1964. During this period, the artists and writers who had been asked to contribute to Fluxus began to exhibit and perform together in Europe and the United States, so that the term “Fluxus” became descriptive of the group’s activities. Influenced by Marcel Duchamp’s readymades and John Cage’s musical innovations, Fluxus artists were opposed to the idea of the art object as a nonfunctional commodity and sought to create an art with a social role.
Mr. Phillpot writes in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, “A few Fluxus people and neo-Fluxus people believe that Fluxus is still a flag to follow, while others believe that “Fluxus hasn’t ever taken place yet!” ….But the elusive sensibility that emerged from a world in flux in the fifties and sixties, and which George Maciunas labeled Fluxus, has weathered the late seventies and early eighties and is fortunately still with us. Today it goes by many names–and no name–resisting institutionalization under the name Fluxus, even as it did while Fluxus packaged pieces of it decades ago.”
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PUBLICATION Fluxus: Selections from The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection by Clive Phillpot and Jon Hendricks. 48 pages. 36 black-andwhite illustrations. Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
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