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George Maciunas (; ; November 8, 1931 Kaunas – May 9, 1978 Boston, Massachusetts) was a Lithuanian American artist, art historian, and art organizer who was the founding member and central coordinator of Fluxus,Colby Chamberlain, Fluxus Administration: George Maciunas and the Art of Paperwork, University of Chicago Press, p. 29 an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers. He is most famous for organizing and performing in early Fluxus and Festivals, for his Fluxus graphic art work, and for assembling a series of highly influential Fluxus artists' multiples.
After fleeing Lithuania to avoid being arrested by the advancing Red Army in 1944, and living briefly in Bad Nauheim, Frankfurt, Germany, initially under Nazi Germany control and then under the occupying forces, Jurgis Mačiūnas and his family emigrated to the US in 1948, living in a middle class area of Long Island, New York.
After arriving in the US, George studied art, graphic design, and architecture at Cooper Union, architecture and musicology at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and finally art history at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts specializing in the European and Siberian art of migrations. His studies lasted eleven years from 1949 to 1960 and were completed in succession. This began a fascination with the history of art for the rest of his life, and whilst there he began his first art-history chart, measuring 6 by 12 feet, a time/space chart categorizing all past styles, movements, schools, artists etc.Mr. Fluxus, p. 31 between 1955 and 1960. Whilst this project remained unfinished, he would publish three versions of a history of the avant-garde. The first appeared in 1966, with Fluxus as the focal point. He also began a correspondence with Raoul Hausmann, an original member of Berlin Dada, who advised him to stop using the term "neo-dada" and concentrate instead on "Fluxus" to describe the nascent movement.Letter from R Hausmann, 1962 quoted in Mr. Fluxus, p. 40
Duke University Professor Kristine Stiles has discussed Fluxus as part of a movement towards global humanism achieved through the breakdown of boundaries in artistic media, cultural norms, and political conventions. The blurring of cultural conventions, which began in the early 20th century with movements such as Dada and Futurism, was continued by Fluxus artists in correspondence with the changes taking place in the sixties. Like the definition of "Flux", which means "to flow", Fluxus artists sought to reorder the temples of production and reveal "the extraordinary that remains latent in the undisclosed ordinary" during the midst of the dramatic Modernism epoch.
As well as Maciunas' concerts at the AG Gallery in March 1961 featuring music and events by Maciunas himself, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Mac Low and Dick Higgins,Oxford Art Online; Performance Art the two other most important precursors to Fluxus were La Monte Young's influential series of performances in the Chambers Street loft of Yoko Ono and Toshi Ichiyanagi in 1961 involving Henry Flynt, La Monte Young, Joseph Byrd & Robert Morris amongst others; and Robert Watts and George Brecht's Yam Festival, spring 1963 at Rutgers University and New York, which included a series of mail art event scores and performances by John Cage, Allan Kaprow, Alison Knowles, Ay-O, and Dick Higgins. All of these artists and more eventually became associated with Fluxus, either through their collaboration on multiples, inclusion in anthologies, or participation in Fluxus concerts'.According to a letter written by Maciunas to Vostell in November 1964, the 'inner core' of fluxus at that time was Brecht, Ay-O, Willem de Ridder, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Joe Jones, Shigeko Kubota, Takehisa Kosugi, Maciunas, Ben Patterson, Mieko Shiomi, Ben Vautier, Robert Watts, Emmett Williams, La Monte Young, with Kuniharu Akiyama listed as co-chairman for Japan, and Barbara Moore as administrator in New York. (quoted in Mr. Fluxus, p. 42)
Other key influences noted by Maciunas included the that had occurred at the Black Mountain College involving Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, and others; the Nouveaux Réalistes; the Concept Art of Henry Flynt and Marcel Duchamp's notion of the readymade.
Though Maciunas conceived of the name "Fluxus" for a publication covering Lithuanian Culture conceived of during a meeting of Lithuanian émigrés,Colby Chamberlain, Fluxus Administration: George Maciunas and the Art of Paperwork, University of Chicago Press, p. 25 Fluxus soon developed into much more: an avant-garde movement characterized by playful subversion of previous art traditions (even including those of previous avant-garde movements). Fluxus also soon meant Dick Higgins' famously coined term intermedia, a view that art should not-be something rarefied or commercial, and a firm commitment to blurring the distinctions between art and life. Maciunas' lifelong interest in made him chart the political, cultural and social history as well as art history and the chronology of Fluxus.
In 1963, Maciunas composed the first Fluxus art manifesto, (see above), which called upon its readers to:
...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.
Shared by its sibling art movements pop art and minimalism, Fluxus expressed a Counterculture sentiment to the value of art and the modes of its experience –distinctly achieved by its commitment to collectivism and to decommodifying and deaestheticizing art. Its aesthetic practitioners, valuing originality over imitating overworked forms, reconceptualized the art object and the nature of performance through musical 'concerts', 'olympic' games, and publications. By undermining the traditional role of art and artist, its humor is reflective of a goal to bring life back into art, which Maciunas states in his agenda, "If man could experience the world, the concrete world surrounding him (from mathematical ideas to physical matter) in the same way he experiences art, there would be no need for art, artists and similar 'nonproductive' elements".
To avoid debt collectors, Maciunas took a job as a civilian graphic designer at a U.S. Air Force base in Wiesbaden, Germany in late 1961.Colby Chamberlain, Fluxus Administration: George Maciunas and the Art of Paperwork, University of Chicago Press, pp. 67-68 It was there that he organized the first Fluxus Festival in September 1962. This festival featured various "concerts," scripted actions performed by Fluxus artists, as well as interpreting a number of works by other members of the international avant-garde .
One of the most notorious events performed at Wiesbaden was Maciunas' interpretation of Philip Corner's Piano Activities, the score of which asked a group of people to 'play', 'scratch or rub' and 'strike soundboard, pins, lid or drag various objects across them.' In Maciunas' interpretation, with the help of Higgins, Williams and others, the piano was completely destroyed. This event was considered scandalous enough to appear on German television four times. The festival then traveled to Cologne, Paris, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam, The Hague, and Nice.The programmes for these concerts included works by John Cage, Terry Riley, Philip Corner, La Monte Young, Henry Flynt, George Brecht, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Yoko Ono, Stockhausen, György Ligeti, Alison Knowles, Emmett Williams, Benjamin Patterson, Joseph Byrd, Raoul Hausmann, Daniel Spoerri, Robert Filliou, Robert Watts, Brion Gysin, Joseph Beuys, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sylvano Bussotti, Tomas Schmit, Takehisa Kosugi, Arthur Köpcke, Wolf Vostell and Cornelius Cardew, amongst others. These concerts and events were to become integral to the legacy of Fluxus.
The shop, like all his business ventures, was notoriously unsuccessful, however. In a 1978 interview with Larry Miller shortly before his death, Maciunas estimated spending 'about $50,000' on Fluxus projects over the years that would never recoup their investment.
Larry Miller, "May I ask a stupid question? Why didn't it pay off? Because isn't part of the idea that it's low cost and multiple distribution..."
GM; "No one was buying it, in those days. We opened up a store on Canal Street, what was it, 1964, and we had it open almost all year. We didn't make one sale in that whole year... We did not even sell a 50 cent item, a postage stamp sheet... you could buy V TRE papers for a quarter, you could buy George Brecht's puzzles for one dollar, Fluxus yearboxes for twenty dollars."Interview with Larry Miller, 1978, quoted in Mr. Fluxus, p. 114
Perhaps most important of all of Maciunas's publishing activities remain the object multiples, conceived as inexpensive, mass-produced unlimited editions. These were either works made by individual Fluxus artists, sometimes in collaboration with Maciunas, or, most controversially, Maciunas's own interpretations of an artist's concept or score. Their purpose was to erode the cultural status of art and to help to eliminate the artist's ego.
Maciunas, a trained graphic designer, was responsible for the memorable packaging of Fluxus objects, posters and newspapers, helping to give the movement a sense of unity that the artists themselves often denied. He also designed a series of name cards incorporating multiple fonts to characterise each of the participating artists. According to Maciunas, Fluxus was epitomized by the work of George Brecht, particularly his word event, "Exit." The artwork consists solely of a card on which is printed the words: "Word Event" and then the word "Exit" below. Maciunas said of "Exit":
The best Fluxus 'Composition' is a most non-personal, 'readymade' one like Brecht's 'Exit'—it does not require and of us to perform it since it happens daily without any 'special' performance of it. Thus our festivals will eliminate themselves (and our need to participate) when they become total readymades (like Brecht's exit) (see [1])
As an architect, he developed an innovative modular prototype useful in the construction of prefabricated buildings while working at Olin Mathieson's division of Aluminum Product Development and Design. He filed a patent (#2,970,676) for the invention of a structural framework for prefabricated buildings using aluminum beams and columns on January 27, 1958. Maciunas was awarded a patent (#4,545,159) for a modular building system on February 7, 1961. He used this invention towards designing a modular prefabricated mass-housing system known as Fluxhouse. Developed as an improved design to Soviet Block Housing (or Khrushchyovka), Fluxhouse was conceived in consideration to efficiency of materials, transportation, and labor to produce a cost and time effective mass-produced housing system. As an efficient modular system intended for factory production, this eco-friendly and sustainable design can be adapted to construct a single family home, a mid-rise building, or a neighborhood community with the multiplication or subtraction of units. Maciunas conceived this design as a dwelling which combines the low-cost advantages of standardization with the freedom of customization.
When Kaplan left the project to embark on other artist cooperative buildings, Maciunas was left with little support against the law. Maciunas continued the co-op despite contravening planning laws, buying a series of loft buildings to sell to artists as working and living spaces. Although it was illegal to sell the units publicly without first filing a full-disclosure prospectus with the New York State Attorney General, Maciunas ignored the legal requirements, beginning a series of increasingly bizarre run-ins with the Attorney General of New York. Maciunas began wearing disguises and going out only at night. Strategies included sending postcards from around the world via associates and friends to persuade the authorities that he was abroad, and placing razor-sharp guillotine blades onto his front door to avoid unwanted visitors. Though, like other Fluxus projects, Maciunas managed his duties without personal profit, financial disputes between the cooperatives led to problems. On November 8, 1975, an argument with an electrician over unpaid bills resulted in a severe beating, allegedly by 'Mafia thugs', which left him with 4 broken ribs, a deflated lung, 36 stitches in his head and blind in one eye. He left New York shortly after, to attempt to start a Fluxus-oriented arts centre in a dilapidated mansion and stud farm in New Marlborough, Massachusetts.
The Fluxhouse cooperatives are often cited as playing a major role in regenerating and gentrifying SoHo. George Maciunas. IMDb SoHo has since been an enclave in which contemporary art movements have developed and flourished.
Adrian Searle, art critic for The Guardian, put it succinctly in a review of a Fluxus exhibition;
The view that his death liberated Fluxus is also widespread;
The life of George Maciunas is subject of a documentary film by the Manhattan-based artist and independent filmmaker Jeffrey Perkins who met Maciunas in 1966. It is made out of Maciunas' friends voices, material from 44 interviews that had been gathered by Perkins since 2010 on his travels to Europe, America and Japan. An oratorio loosely based on Maciunas and titled Machunas premiered in August 2005 in the St. Christopher Summer Festival in Vilnius, Lithuania. Machunas was conceived by artist Lucio Pozzi, with music by Frank J. Oteri. Several of Maciunas' friends and colleagues protested the fact that the libretto was mistaken by many as a biography.
In 2024, art historian Colby Chamberlain published an indepth book on Maciunas with the University of Chicago Press called Fluxus Administration: George Maciunas and the Art of Paperwork.
Despite controversy, the Stendhal gallery has held multiple exhibitions devoted to the legacy and work of George Maciunas. In 2005, they presented To George With Love: From the Personal Collection of Jonas Mekas, which displayed original drawings, posters, objects, and other Fluxus items as well as various films from the Fluxfilm Anthology, a collection of 41 films made by Fluxus artists. In 2006, the gallery presented George Maciunas, 1953–1978: Charts Diagrams, Films, Documents, and Atlases. In 2007, the Maya Stendhal Gallery collaborated with the city of Vilnius, Lithuania, to open the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center. The center's inaugural exhibition examined the lives and work of prominent figures within the history of the avant-garde, including George Maciunas. In 2008, the gallery held an exhibition devoted to Maciunas' architectural projects, in particular, a utopian housing structure Maciunas drafted in the late fifties and early sixties, entitled George Maciunas: Prefabricated Building Systems.
In 2010 problems arose between Harry Stendhal and Jonas Mekas in which some of the practices of the Stendhal Gallery fell into question, causing concern among surviving Fluxus artists.Vartanian, Hrag (July 13, 2010) "Stendhal Gallery Owner Accused of Swindling Artists Jonas Mekas & Paula Scher". hyperallergic.com The George Maciunas/Fluxus Foundation, became active in November 2011, presenting exhibitions on the contemporary applications of Maciunas' inventions and theories regarding education and architecture. These exhibitions have explored his ideas as precursors to adaptive design processes and global networks. In September 2012, the foundation held an exhibition on Maciunas' architectural work centered on his prefabricated modular mass-housing system known as Fluxhouse.
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