if artists were on the lookout for things to portray things from life in their art decided that life just the way it is suffices... then what? isn't life good enough to be art? to be thought of and treated as art?
having done a presentation on Dick Higgins (1938 - 1998) a few days back I found out about a group of artists who had this viewpoint. Dick Higgins was a man with many talents - poetry, music, visual art... and also writing about art. There he spent a good amount of time and had his own publishing house named the "Something Else Press".
He writes about the art - life dichotomy:
“In the situation of art that is in a dialectical relationship with the ‘real world’ outside itself, the art work (as in both Dada and Fluxus, for instance) directly incorporates elements from daily living – treating the making of a cup of coffee as music, for instance. The purpose of this is not, of course, to shock or proclaim originality. If it were, the artist would surely propose to mix concrete and turds and fill the pot with that. Rather, it is to see something that many people experience in a new and aesthetic way, and thus it is very important that real water, real coffee, and a real stove (for instance) be used, not the illusions of them. In this way the overall experience of art will be enriched by one’s life, and one’s life will be enriched by art.”
[from his essay Modernism Since Postmodernism]
The group of artists were scattered over USA and Europe. And when George Maciunus and Dick Higgins started the publication for the kind of activities these like minded artists, a name was given to the collective... FLUXUS, from the word 'Flux' for change. The other artists associated with this style is John Cage, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, and Nam June Paik.
For an interesting short history of Fluxus, read Higgins' A Child's History of Fluxus
having done a presentation on Dick Higgins (1938 - 1998) a few days back I found out about a group of artists who had this viewpoint. Dick Higgins was a man with many talents - poetry, music, visual art... and also writing about art. There he spent a good amount of time and had his own publishing house named the "Something Else Press".
He writes about the art - life dichotomy:
“In the situation of art that is in a dialectical relationship with the ‘real world’ outside itself, the art work (as in both Dada and Fluxus, for instance) directly incorporates elements from daily living – treating the making of a cup of coffee as music, for instance. The purpose of this is not, of course, to shock or proclaim originality. If it were, the artist would surely propose to mix concrete and turds and fill the pot with that. Rather, it is to see something that many people experience in a new and aesthetic way, and thus it is very important that real water, real coffee, and a real stove (for instance) be used, not the illusions of them. In this way the overall experience of art will be enriched by one’s life, and one’s life will be enriched by art.”
[from his essay Modernism Since Postmodernism]
The group of artists were scattered over USA and Europe. And when George Maciunus and Dick Higgins started the publication for the kind of activities these like minded artists, a name was given to the collective... FLUXUS, from the word 'Flux' for change. The other artists associated with this style is John Cage, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, and Nam June Paik.
For an interesting short history of Fluxus, read Higgins' A Child's History of Fluxus
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