George Brecht
Encyclopedia
George Brecht born George Ellis MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist
and avant-garde
composer
as well as a professional chemist
who worked as a consultant
for companies including Pfizer
, Johnson & Johnson
, and Mobil Oil. He was a key member of, and influence on, Fluxus
, the international group of avant-garde artists centred around George Maciunas
, having been involved with the group from the first performances in Wiesbaden
1962 until Maciunas' death in 1978.
One of the originators of 'participatory' art, in which the artwork can only be experienced by the active involvement of the viewer, he is most famous for his Event Scores such as Drip Music 1962, (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT5lgaE-qZY) and is widely seen as an important precursor to conceptual art
. He described his own art as a way of “ensuring that the details of everyday life, the random constellations of objects that surround us, stop going unnoticed.”
who had toured with John Philip Sousa's
marching band before settling in New York
to play bass flute
for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the NBC Symphony Orchestra
. After his father's death from alcoholism when Brecht was 10 years old, he moved with his mother to Atlantic City, New Jersey. He enlisted for military service in 1943, and it was whilst he was stationed near the Black Forest
, Germany, 1945, that he changed his surname to 'Brecht' - 'not in reference to Bertolt Brecht
, but because he liked the sound of the name'.
After World War II
, he studied chemistry
at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy & Science
, finishing his degree and marrying his first wife Marceline in 1951. After working briefly for Charles Pfizer & Co
as a quality control inspector, he took a job as a research chemist for Johnson & Johnson
in 1953, settling in New Jersey
. Over the next decade he would register 5 US patents and 2 co-patents including four patents for tampon
s. His only son Eric was born in New Jersey in 1953.
and Robert Rauschenberg
- Rauschenberg's exhibition of grass seeds, Growing Painting, 1954, left 'a significant impression on him' - he began to formulate ideas about 'chance method schemes' that would eventually be printed as a booklet by the Something Else Press
as Chance Imagery (1957/66). The work was 'a systematic investigation of the role of chance in the 20th century in the fields of science and avant-garde art... reveal[ing] his respect for Dada
ist and surrealist
projects as well as for the more complex aspects of the work of Marcel Duchamp
, whom he considered the embodiment of the 'artist-researcher'. Artworks in this period included bed-sheets stained with ink he called Chance Paintings.
In 1957, Brecht sought out the artist Robert Watts
, after seeing his work exhibited at Douglass College, Rutgers University, where Watts taught. This led to lunch meetings once a week for a number of years at a cafe
between the university and Brecht's laboratory. Watts' colleague Allan Kaprow
would also regularly attend these informal meetings. Discussions at these lunches would lead directly to the setting up of the Yam Festival, 1962–63, by Watts and Brecht, seen as one of the most important precursors to Fluxus. The meetings also led to both Brecht and Kaprow attending John Cage
's class at The New School for Social Research
, New York, often driving down together from New Brunswick.
, Yoko Ono
and many other avant-garde artists who passed through these classes.
The two had originally met in 1957 when Brecht heard that Cage was planning to hunt mushrooms in the New Jersey area; he rang him up and invited him to 'stop by and say hello'. Cage accepted, and returned the invitation; it was whilst Brecht, Kaprow and their families were visiting his house in Stony Point
on the Hudson, that Cage invited them to attend his classes in New York. Ironically, musicians found the course far harder than the visual artists who had enrolled;
Initially writing theatrical scores similar to Kaprow's earliest Happenings, Brecht grew increasingly dissatisfied with the didactic nature of these performances. After performing in one such piece, Cage quipped that he'd "never felt so controlled before." prompting Brecht to pare the scores down to haiku
-like statements, leaving space for radically different interpretations each time the piece was performed. Brecht would later refer to Cage as his 'liberator', whilst, in the opinion of some critics, moving beyond Cage's notion of music; Cage was still writing scores to be performed. Brecht had replaced this with a world permeated with music. "No matter what you do," he said, "you're always hearing something."
In October 1959, fresh from studying with Cage, Brecht organised his first one-man show at the Reuben Gallery, New York. Called Towards Events: An Arrangement, it was neither an exhibition of objects or a performance, but somewhere in between. Comprising works that emphasised time, the works could be manipulated by the viewer in various ways, revealing sounds, smells and tactile textures. One, Case, instructed viewers to unpack the contents and to use them 'in ways appropriate to their nature.' This work would become Valoche (see http://www.archiviobonotto.org/ita/progetti/images/maxi/CreativeRevolution_13.jpg), the last Fluxus multiple that George Maciunas, the 'Chairman' of Fluxus, would work on before his death 19 years later.
Michael Nyman
, the interviewer, responded that in Brecht's work "sound-producing instruments [in the Event-Scores] have been made mute (the violin, in Solo for Violin Viola Cello or Contrabass, is polished, not played), and non-sounding instruments, or non-instruments, for instance a comb (Comb Music, 1962) are made sounding." Another piece, Solo for Wind Instrument, contained the single instruction (putting it down).
Later in his life, when asked about his father, Brecht replied that "[he] gave up music-making in the mid-'30s by lying down and not breathing any more on the couch at 165 W. 82nd Street, where we were living at the time."
This method of distribution - soon to become known as mail art
- would become the basis for the build up to the Yam Festival (May backwards), mid 1962-May 1963, organised with Robert Watts. The mailed scores were intended to build anticipation for a month long series of events held in New York and on George Segal's farm, New Jersey. Featuring a large cross section of avant-garde artists, the festival was based around the idea of operating 'as an alternative to the gallery system, producing art that could not be bought'. Artists participating in the festival included Alison Knowles
, Allan Kaprow, John Cage, Al Hansen
, Ay-O
, Dick Higgins, Karlheinz Stockhausen
and Ray Johnson
. The festival has come to be seen as a proto-fluxus event, involving many of the same artists.
One of the recipients of the mail shots (as well as a participant in the festival) was La Monte Young
. Young, a musician who had arrived in New York September 1960, had been asked to guest edit a special edition of Beatitude East on avant-garde art, which evolved into the seminal compendium, An Anthology Of Chance (see http://www.ubu.com/historical/young/index.html.) Brecht was the first artist listed in the compendium; the graphic designer and publisher of the book was George Maciunas, who had been attending the same music classes, although by now they were being given by Richard Maxfield
.
Fluxus was to grow out of Maciunas' friendship with the artists centred around these classes; his conception of Fluxus was based on LEF
, a communist organisation set up in Russia in the 1920s to help create a new socialist culture Whilst it is unlikely Brecht agreed with Maciunas politically, he strongly agreed with the notion of the unprofessional status of the artist, the de-privileging of the author, and appreciated Maciunas' ability at organisation and design.
Brecht would remain a prominent member of Fluxus until Maciunas' death, 1978. His work was included in each of the major Festum Fluxorum performances in Europe, 1962–63; in Fluxus 1
, 1963, the first Flux Yearbook; as part of the various Fluxkits, collecting works by the group together; and was a key part of Flux performances and objects right up to the Flux Harpsichord Concert, 1976 and the last Flux Cabinets. An indication of his importance within the group is captured in a letter from Maciunas to Emmett Williams
, April 1963, concerning plans Maciunas had been formulating with the marxist intellectual Henry Flynt
;
It was Maciunas who conceived of (and published) Water Yam, a collection of around 70 of Brecht's event scores packaged in a cardboard box published in Wiesbaden
, April 1963. The first Fluxbox, it was intended to be part of a series of boxes containing the complete works of each of the members of Fluxus. In keeping with Maciunas' principles, the boxes were neither numbered or signed, and originally sold for $4.
Many of his other Fluxus multiples involved absurdist puzzles which were impossible to resolve in a traditional manner (see http://slangfromchaos.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/brecht_maciunas_puzzle.jpg).
Three Chair Events
For the exhibition, the white chair was spot-lit in the middle of the gallery with a stack of Three Chair Events scores placed nearby on a window sill. The black chair was placed in the bathroom, whilst the yellow chair was placed outside on the street, and was being sat on by Claes Oldenburg
's mother - deep in conversation - when Brecht arrived for the private view. A later piece, Chair With A History, 1966, part of a series Brecht worked on in Rome, featured a chair with a red book placed on it inviting the occupier to add 'whatever was happening' as part of an ongoing record of the chair's history (see http://www.danceinsider.com/images/jj_Chair.jpg). Other series of works included signs - often readymade - with simple statements on, such as 'Exit' or 'Notice Green' embossed in a red sign next to 'Notice Red' embossed on a green one (see http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__FSXbtt4Jv4/RyDip8DbmhI/AAAAAAAAAGU/oseRlklVgic/s320/brecht_exit.jpg).
Brecht started a series called The Book of the Tumbler on Fire in 1964, and exhibited the first 56 at the Fischback Gallery NY in early 1965, shortly before leaving the US. The pieces consisted of framed collages, made of cotton-filled specimen boxes, designed to show "the continuity of unlike things." Brecht would pursue this series for over a decade, with each piece being referred to as a 'page'.
He arrived in Rome
, April 1965; from there he moved to Villefranche-sur-Mer
, France
, to start a shop, La Cédille qui Sourit, (The Cedilla
That Smiles), with the French artist Robert Filliou
, another member of Fluxus. The shop was intended to explore ideas about the 'obtuse relationship(s) to the institution of language' but instead ushered in what he described cheerfully as "accelerated creative inactivity".
westward to Portland Bill
.
In November 1969, Cornelius Cardew
's Scratch Orchestra
(see http://www.l-m-c.org.uk/text/scratch/scores_material.pdf) performed Realization of the Journey of the Isle of Wight Westwards by Iceberg to Tokyo Bay, a piece based on Brecht's Translocations, in London. Other imagined moves included Cuba
moving alongside Miami, and Iceland
moving next to Spain
.
Buddhism, Brecht began a focussed study of the Chinese language with the aim of translating the ancient text the Hsin-Hsin-Ming
by Seng Ts'an, c600 AD, in 1976. The book, published in 1980, included three autonomous translations; an English version by Brecht, a French one by Filliou and a German version by A Fabri. It also included calligraphy by Takako Saito
.
Other works completed in this period include a series of Crystal Boxes, containing constantly transforming crystals; a performance and lecture 'with slides, music and fireworks' called The Chemistry of Music given at the ICA
; The Brunch Museum, an exhibition dedicated to relics associated with the (fictional) character WE Brunch; a play entitled 'Silent Music' broadcast on West German Radio as part of celebrations for John Cage's 75th birthday; and 3 large sculptures, called Void Stones, commissioned for the Skulptur Projekte Münster
.
In 2006 he won the prestigious Berlin Art Prize. From late 1971 Brecht lived in Cologne
, where he died, after a number of years of failing health, on 5 December 2008. His first marriage ended in 1963; he married for a second time, to Hertha Klang, in 2002. He lived with Donna Jo Brewer for a number of years between.
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
and avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
as well as a professional chemist
Chemist
A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
who worked as a consultant
Consultant
A consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice in a particular area such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, emergency management, food production, medicine, finance, life management, economics, public...
for companies including Pfizer
Pfizer
Pfizer, Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, United States...
, Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson is an American multinational pharmaceutical, medical devices and consumer packaged goods manufacturer founded in 1886. Its common stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the company is listed among the Fortune 500....
, and Mobil Oil. He was a key member of, and influence on, Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
, the international group of avant-garde artists centred around George Maciunas
George Maciunas
George Maciunas was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He was a founding member of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers...
, having been involved with the group from the first performances in Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
1962 until Maciunas' death in 1978.
One of the originators of 'participatory' art, in which the artwork can only be experienced by the active involvement of the viewer, he is most famous for his Event Scores such as Drip Music 1962, (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT5lgaE-qZY) and is widely seen as an important precursor to conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
. He described his own art as a way of “ensuring that the details of everyday life, the random constellations of objects that surround us, stop going unnoticed.”
Biography
Early life
Brecht was born George Ellis MacDiarmid in New York, August 27, 1926. His father, also George Ellis MacDiarmid, was a professional flautistFlautist
A flautist or flutist is a musician who plays an instrument in the flute family. See List of flautists.The choice of "flautist" versus "flutist" is the source of dispute among players of the instrument...
who had toured with John Philip Sousa's
John Philip Sousa
John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known particularly for American military and patriotic marches. Because of his mastery of march composition, he is known as "The March King" or the "American March King" due to his British counterpart Kenneth J....
marching band before settling in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
to play bass flute
Bass flute
The bass flute is the bass member of the flute family. It is in the key of C, pitched one octave below the concert flute. Because of the length of its tube , it is usually made with a "J" shaped head joint, which brings the embouchure hole within reach of the player...
for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the NBC Symphony Orchestra
NBC Symphony Orchestra
The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra established by David Sarnoff of the National Broadcasting Company especially for conductor Arturo Toscanini...
. After his father's death from alcoholism when Brecht was 10 years old, he moved with his mother to Atlantic City, New Jersey. He enlisted for military service in 1943, and it was whilst he was stationed near the Black Forest
Black Forest
The Black Forest is a wooded mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany. It is bordered by the Rhine valley to the west and south. The highest peak is the Feldberg with an elevation of 1,493 metres ....
, Germany, 1945, that he changed his surname to 'Brecht' - 'not in reference to Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
, but because he liked the sound of the name'.
After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he studied chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy & Science
University of the Sciences in Philadelphia
University of the Sciences , officially known as University of the Sciences in Philadelphia , located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in pharmacy and a variety of other health-related disciplines.-History:The history of the University of the Sciences...
, finishing his degree and marrying his first wife Marceline in 1951. After working briefly for Charles Pfizer & Co
Pfizer
Pfizer, Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, United States...
as a quality control inspector, he took a job as a research chemist for Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson is an American multinational pharmaceutical, medical devices and consumer packaged goods manufacturer founded in 1886. Its common stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the company is listed among the Fortune 500....
in 1953, settling in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
. Over the next decade he would register 5 US patents and 2 co-patents including four patents for tampon
Tampon
A tampon is a mass of cotton or rayon or a mixture of the two inserted into a body cavity or wound to absorb bodilyfluid. The most common type in daily use is designed to be inserted into the vagina during menstruation to absorb the flow of menstrual fluid...
s. His only son Eric was born in New Jersey in 1953.
Toward events
Whilst working as a chemist (a job that he would keep until 1965), Brecht became increasingly interested in art that explored chance. Initially influenced by Jackson PollockJackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
and Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
- Rauschenberg's exhibition of grass seeds, Growing Painting, 1954, left 'a significant impression on him' - he began to formulate ideas about 'chance method schemes' that would eventually be printed as a booklet by the Something Else Press
Something Else Press
Something Else Press was founded by Dick Higgins in 1963. It published many important Intermedia texts and artworks by Higgins, Ray Johnson, Gertrude Stein, George Brecht, Daniel Spoerri, Bern Porter, John Cage, Emmett Williams and others. The Something Else Press was an early publisher of...
as Chance Imagery (1957/66). The work was 'a systematic investigation of the role of chance in the 20th century in the fields of science and avant-garde art... reveal[ing] his respect for Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
ist and surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
projects as well as for the more complex aspects of the work of Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
, whom he considered the embodiment of the 'artist-researcher'. Artworks in this period included bed-sheets stained with ink he called Chance Paintings.
In 1957, Brecht sought out the artist Robert Watts
Robert Watts (artist)
Robert Watts was an American artist best known for his work as a member of the international Avant-garde art movement Fluxus. Born in Burlington, Iowa June 14, 1923, he became Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Jersey in 1953, a post he kept until 1984...
, after seeing his work exhibited at Douglass College, Rutgers University, where Watts taught. This led to lunch meetings once a week for a number of years at a cafe
Howard Johnson's
Howard Johnson's is a chain of hotels and restaurants, located primarily throughout the United States and Canada. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Howard Johnson's was the largest restaurant chain in the United States, with over 1,000 restaurants...
between the university and Brecht's laboratory. Watts' colleague Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...
would also regularly attend these informal meetings. Discussions at these lunches would lead directly to the setting up of the Yam Festival, 1962–63, by Watts and Brecht, seen as one of the most important precursors to Fluxus. The meetings also led to both Brecht and Kaprow attending John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
's class at The New School for Social Research
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
, New York, often driving down together from New Brunswick.
John Cage and the New School for Social Research
Brecht studied with Cage between 1958 and 1959, during which time he invented, and then refined, the Event Score which would become a central feature of Fluxus. Typically, Event Scores are simple instructions to complete everyday tasks which can be performed publicly, privately, or negatively (i.e., deciding not to perform them at all). These ideas would be taken up and expanded upon up by La Monte YoungLa Monte Young
La Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...
, Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
and many other avant-garde artists who passed through these classes.
The two had originally met in 1957 when Brecht heard that Cage was planning to hunt mushrooms in the New Jersey area; he rang him up and invited him to 'stop by and say hello'. Cage accepted, and returned the invitation; it was whilst Brecht, Kaprow and their families were visiting his house in Stony Point
Stony Point, New York
Stony Point is a triangle-shaped town in Rockland County, United States. Rockland County is part of the New York Metropolitan Area. The town is located north of the town of Haverstraw, east and south of Orange County, New York, and west of the Hudson River and Westchester County. The population...
on the Hudson, that Cage invited them to attend his classes in New York. Ironically, musicians found the course far harder than the visual artists who had enrolled;
"Cage... was very keenly a philosophical mind, not just an artist's mind; his sense of aesthetics was secondary and thought was primary. He impressed me immediately. So I thought, well, who cares if he's a musician and I'm a painter. This is unimportant. It's the mind that transcends any medium.....
"The rate of attrition was something fierce. The end result was that there were very few musician types and the event nature of the class became apparent. George Brecht's understanding of an intimate situation was far greater than mine. I needed more space to really work. But George really came to life in that situation..... He became a leader; and immediately he influenced not only me, but everybody else: Jackson Maclow, Higgins, Hansen. George SegalGeorge Segal (artist)George Segal was an American painter and sculptor associated with the Pop Art movement. He was presented with a National Medal of Arts in 1999.-Works:...
stopped by, and so did DineJim DineJim Dine is an American pop artist. He is sometimes considered to be a part of the Neo-Dada movement. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, attended Walnut Hills High School, the University of Cincinnati, and received a BFA from Ohio University in 1957. He first earned respect in the art world with...
, WhitmanRobert WhitmanRobert Whitman is an American artist best known for his seminal theater pieces of the early 1960s combining visual and sound images, actors, film, slides, and evocative props in environments of his own making...
and OldenburgClaes OldenburgClaes Oldenburg is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects...
." Allan Kaprow
Initially writing theatrical scores similar to Kaprow's earliest Happenings, Brecht grew increasingly dissatisfied with the didactic nature of these performances. After performing in one such piece, Cage quipped that he'd "never felt so controlled before." prompting Brecht to pare the scores down to haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
-like statements, leaving space for radically different interpretations each time the piece was performed. Brecht would later refer to Cage as his 'liberator', whilst, in the opinion of some critics, moving beyond Cage's notion of music; Cage was still writing scores to be performed. Brecht had replaced this with a world permeated with music. "No matter what you do," he said, "you're always hearing something."
In October 1959, fresh from studying with Cage, Brecht organised his first one-man show at the Reuben Gallery, New York. Called Towards Events: An Arrangement, it was neither an exhibition of objects or a performance, but somewhere in between. Comprising works that emphasised time, the works could be manipulated by the viewer in various ways, revealing sounds, smells and tactile textures. One, Case, instructed viewers to unpack the contents and to use them 'in ways appropriate to their nature.' This work would become Valoche (see http://www.archiviobonotto.org/ita/progetti/images/maxi/CreativeRevolution_13.jpg), the last Fluxus multiple that George Maciunas, the 'Chairman' of Fluxus, would work on before his death 19 years later.
New York avant-garde
Flute Solo
In a frequently retold anecdote used to describe the origins of one of Brecht's most personal Event Scores, the artist recalled an incident when his father had a 'nervous breakdown ' during a rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra;
'[A] soprano was bugging everybody with temper tantrums during rehearsal. At a certain point the orchestra crashed onto a major seventh and there was silence for the soprano and flute cadenzaCadenzaIn music, a cadenza is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing for virtuosic display....
. Nothing happened. The soprano looked into the orchestra pit and saw that my father had completely taken apart his flute, down to the last screw. (I used this idea in my 1962 FLUTE SOLO).' George Brecht
Michael Nyman
Michael Nyman
Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano...
, the interviewer, responded that in Brecht's work "sound-producing instruments [in the Event-Scores] have been made mute (the violin, in Solo for Violin Viola Cello or Contrabass, is polished, not played), and non-sounding instruments, or non-instruments, for instance a comb (Comb Music, 1962) are made sounding." Another piece, Solo for Wind Instrument, contained the single instruction (putting it down).
Later in his life, when asked about his father, Brecht replied that "[he] gave up music-making in the mid-'30s by lying down and not breathing any more on the couch at 165 W. 82nd Street, where we were living at the time."
The Yam Festival
As Brecht's interest in Event Scores began to dominate his output, he started to mail small cards bearing the scores to various friends "like little enlightenments I wanted to communicate to my friends who would know what to do with them."This method of distribution - soon to become known as mail art
Mail art
Mail art is a worldwide cultural movement that began in the early 1960s and involves sending visual art through the international postal system. Mail Art is also known as Postal Art or Correspondence Art...
- would become the basis for the build up to the Yam Festival (May backwards), mid 1962-May 1963, organised with Robert Watts. The mailed scores were intended to build anticipation for a month long series of events held in New York and on George Segal's farm, New Jersey. Featuring a large cross section of avant-garde artists, the festival was based around the idea of operating 'as an alternative to the gallery system, producing art that could not be bought'. Artists participating in the festival included Alison Knowles
Alison Knowles
Alison Knowles in New York City is an American visual artist known for her soundworks, installations, performances, and publications. Knowles was very active in the Fluxus movement, and continues to create work inspired by her Fluxus experience....
, Allan Kaprow, John Cage, Al Hansen
Al Hansen
Alfred Earl "Al" Hansen was an American artist considered as one of the most important Fluxus figures. He was a Norwegian American....
, Ay-O
Ay-O
is a Japanese artist, who has been associated with Fluxus since its international beginnings in the 1960s.-From Democrato to Fluxus:Probably, the best reference to understand the early years of Ay-O is the autobiographical retrospective book in the references "Ay-O, Over the Rainbow, Ay-O...
, Dick Higgins, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
and Ray Johnson
Ray Johnson
Raymond Edward Johnson , known primarily as a collagist and correspondence artist, was a seminal figure in the history of Neo-Dada and early Pop art...
. The festival has come to be seen as a proto-fluxus event, involving many of the same artists.
One of the recipients of the mail shots (as well as a participant in the festival) was La Monte Young
La Monte Young
La Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...
. Young, a musician who had arrived in New York September 1960, had been asked to guest edit a special edition of Beatitude East on avant-garde art, which evolved into the seminal compendium, An Anthology Of Chance (see http://www.ubu.com/historical/young/index.html.) Brecht was the first artist listed in the compendium; the graphic designer and publisher of the book was George Maciunas, who had been attending the same music classes, although by now they were being given by Richard Maxfield
Richard Maxfield
Richard Maxfield was a composer of instrumental, electro-acoustic, and electronic music.Born in Seattle, he most likely taught the first University-level course in electronic music in America at the New School for Social Research...
.
George Maciunas and the beginnings of Fluxus
LEF (journal)
LEF was the journal of the Left Front of the Arts , a widely ranging association of avant-garde writers, photographers, critics and designers in the Soviet Union. It had two runs, one from 1923 to 1925 as LEF, and later from 1927 to 1929 as Novy LEF...
, a communist organisation set up in Russia in the 1920s to help create a new socialist culture Whilst it is unlikely Brecht agreed with Maciunas politically, he strongly agreed with the notion of the unprofessional status of the artist, the de-privileging of the author, and appreciated Maciunas' ability at organisation and design.
'The people in Fluxus had understood, as Brecht explained, that "concert halls, theaters, and art galleries" were "mummifying." Instead, these artists found themselves "preferring streets, homes, and railway stations...." Maciunas recognized a radical political potential in all this forthrightly anti-institutional production, which was an important source for his own deep commitment to it. Deploying his expertise as a professional graphic designer, Maciunas played an important role in projecting upon Fluxus whatever coherence it would later seem to have had.'
Brecht would remain a prominent member of Fluxus until Maciunas' death, 1978. His work was included in each of the major Festum Fluxorum performances in Europe, 1962–63; in Fluxus 1
Fluxus 1
Fluxus 1 is an artists' book edited and produced by the Lithuanian-American artist George Maciunas, containing works by a series of artists associated with Fluxus, the international collective of avant-garde artists primarily active in the 1960s and 1970s...
, 1963, the first Flux Yearbook; as part of the various Fluxkits, collecting works by the group together; and was a key part of Flux performances and objects right up to the Flux Harpsichord Concert, 1976 and the last Flux Cabinets. An indication of his importance within the group is captured in a letter from Maciunas to Emmett Williams
Emmett Williams
Emmett Williams was an American poet and visual artist.Williams was born in Greenville, South Carolina, and grew up in Virginia, and lived in Europe from 1949 to 1966...
, April 1963, concerning plans Maciunas had been formulating with the marxist intellectual Henry Flynt
Henry Flynt
Henry Flynt is a philosopher, avant-garde musician, anti-art activist and exhibited artist often associated with Conceptual Art, Fluxus and Nihilism.-Background:...
;
'Bad news! George Brecht wants out of Fluxus, thinks Fluxus is getting too aggressive (this newsletter No.6 [Propaganda through pickets and demonstrations, sabotage and disruption]). So we will have to compromise, find a midpoint between Flynt, PaikNam June PaikNam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist....
& Brecht (if a midway can be found!) It would be very bad without Brecht. He is the best man in New York (I think)....'
It was Maciunas who conceived of (and published) Water Yam, a collection of around 70 of Brecht's event scores packaged in a cardboard box published in Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
, April 1963. The first Fluxbox, it was intended to be part of a series of boxes containing the complete works of each of the members of Fluxus. In keeping with Maciunas' principles, the boxes were neither numbered or signed, and originally sold for $4.
Many of his other Fluxus multiples involved absurdist puzzles which were impossible to resolve in a traditional manner (see http://slangfromchaos.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/brecht_maciunas_puzzle.jpg).
Other works
Whilst the pieces he made for the Fluxus cooperative remain his most famous works, he continued to exhibit artworks within more traditional gallery spaces throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Many of these works played with the notion of the Readymade, attempting to retain the pieces' functionality. Chairs feature in a lot of these works; the earliest was Three Chair Events exhibited at the Martha Jackson Gallery, NY, 1961.Three Chair Events
• Sitting on a black chair. Occurrence.
• Yellow Chair. (Occurrence.)
• On (or near) a white chair. Occurrence,
Spring 1961
For the exhibition, the white chair was spot-lit in the middle of the gallery with a stack of Three Chair Events scores placed nearby on a window sill. The black chair was placed in the bathroom, whilst the yellow chair was placed outside on the street, and was being sat on by Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects...
's mother - deep in conversation - when Brecht arrived for the private view. A later piece, Chair With A History, 1966, part of a series Brecht worked on in Rome, featured a chair with a red book placed on it inviting the occupier to add 'whatever was happening' as part of an ongoing record of the chair's history (see http://www.danceinsider.com/images/jj_Chair.jpg). Other series of works included signs - often readymade - with simple statements on, such as 'Exit' or 'Notice Green' embossed in a red sign next to 'Notice Red' embossed on a green one (see http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__FSXbtt4Jv4/RyDip8DbmhI/AAAAAAAAAGU/oseRlklVgic/s320/brecht_exit.jpg).
Brecht started a series called The Book of the Tumbler on Fire in 1964, and exhibited the first 56 at the Fischback Gallery NY in early 1965, shortly before leaving the US. The pieces consisted of framed collages, made of cotton-filled specimen boxes, designed to show "the continuity of unlike things." Brecht would pursue this series for over a decade, with each piece being referred to as a 'page'.
Europe
The Cedilla That Smiles
Maciunas' decision to picket a Stockhausen concert of Originale in August 1964 is often seen as the point at which the original, 'heroic' era of Fluxus splintered; the move seems to have alienated Brecht who, whilst not severing relations, left New York in the spring of 1965 for Europe, despite Cage allegedly spending a whole evening trying to persuade him to stay.He arrived in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, April 1965; from there he moved to Villefranche-sur-Mer
Villefranche-sur-Mer
Villefranche-sur-Mer is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region on the French Riviera.-Geography:...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, to start a shop, La Cédille qui Sourit, (The Cedilla
Cedilla
A cedilla , also known as cedilha or cédille, is a hook added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation.-Origin:...
That Smiles), with the French artist Robert Filliou
Robert Filliou
Robert Filliou was a French Fluxus artist, who produced works as a filmmaker, "action poet," sculptor, and happenings maestro....
, another member of Fluxus. The shop was intended to explore ideas about the 'obtuse relationship(s) to the institution of language' but instead ushered in what he described cheerfully as "accelerated creative inactivity".
Land Mass Translocations
After the shop closed in 1968, Brecht moved to London, where he formed a new company, 'Brecht and MacDiarmid', which proposed a number of Land Mass Translocations. As a pilot project, Brecht suggested moving the Isle of WightIsle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
westward to Portland Bill
Portland Bill
Portland Bill is a narrow promontory of Portland stone, which forms the most southerly part of Isle of Portland, and therefore also the county of Dorset, England....
.
"One of us (GB) proposed in 1966 that the Arctic ice pack be interchanged with the Antarctic, and in the winter of 1967-8, in London, the idea of moving England closer to the equator presented itself. This intuition was reinforced by recent scientific studies which have shown that England is being tilted... at a rate such that areas of London 15 meters above sea level or less will be submerged in 1500 years time. Considering that London has been an inhabited place for at least 2000 years, this is not as remote an event as it seems. In this light, Brecht and MacDiarmid are undertaking research into the feasibility of moving land masses over the surface of the earth..... Movement of the Isle of Wight would be a pilot project for the larger translocation of England." George Brecht, B.Sc.Bachelor of ScienceA Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...
In November 1969, Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew was an English experimental music composer, and founder of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected the avant-garde in favour of a politically motivated "people's liberation music".-Biography:Cardew was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire...
's Scratch Orchestra
Scratch Orchestra
The Scratch Orchestra was an experimental musical ensemble founded in the spring of 1969 by Cornelius Cardew, Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton....
(see http://www.l-m-c.org.uk/text/scratch/scores_material.pdf) performed Realization of the Journey of the Isle of Wight Westwards by Iceberg to Tokyo Bay, a piece based on Brecht's Translocations, in London. Other imagined moves included Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
moving alongside Miami, and Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
moving next to Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
.
Translating the Hsin-Hsin-Ming
As part of his lifelong interest in ZenZen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...
Buddhism, Brecht began a focussed study of the Chinese language with the aim of translating the ancient text the Hsin-Hsin-Ming
Xinxin Ming
Xinxin Ming a verse attributed to the Third Chinese Chan Patriarch Jianzhi Sengcan 僧璨 Xinxin Ming (alt. spellings: Xin Xin Ming or Xinxinming) (信心銘) (Wade-Giles: Hsin Hsin Ming; Japanese: Shinjinmei (or Shinjin no Mei)) a verse attributed to the Third Chinese Chan (Zen) Patriarch Jianzhi...
by Seng Ts'an, c600 AD, in 1976. The book, published in 1980, included three autonomous translations; an English version by Brecht, a French one by Filliou and a German version by A Fabri. It also included calligraphy by Takako Saito
Takako Saito
Takako Saito is a Japanese artist, born in Sabae-Shi, Fukui Province in Japan in 1929. Closely associated with Fluxus, the international collective of avant-garde artists that was active primarily in the 1960s and 1970s, she currently lives in Düsseldorf in Germany...
.
Other works completed in this period include a series of Crystal Boxes, containing constantly transforming crystals; a performance and lecture 'with slides, music and fireworks' called The Chemistry of Music given at the ICA
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
; The Brunch Museum, an exhibition dedicated to relics associated with the (fictional) character WE Brunch; a play entitled 'Silent Music' broadcast on West German Radio as part of celebrations for John Cage's 75th birthday; and 3 large sculptures, called Void Stones, commissioned for the Skulptur Projekte Münster
Skulptur Projekte Münster
Skulptur Projekte Münster is an exhibition of sculptures in public places in the town of Münster...
.
'[The Chemistry of Music & The Brunch Museum are two of the] three projects that Brecht called “meta-creations”. The first, from 1968, is a slide-based lecture under the title The Chemistry of Music, which offers a critique of the lecture format as the predominating method of teaching. The second, The San Antonio Installation, is based on extracts from a popular series of French detective novels by the author San AntonioFrédéric DardFrédéric Dard was a French writer and author of the San-Antonio series..-Biography:...
. The excerpts consist in an eccentric collection of articles (many of them found in French flea markets) which materialise details of the narrations and which present a kind of antidote against passive experience – in this case, the mechanical absorption of cheap literature. The third project is The Brunch Museum, an ingenious “exhibited object” of the life and work of W. E. Brunch, an imaginary figure of “great historical importance” invented by Brecht and the artist Stephen Kukowski. As in the case of the lecture model and novel, this project challenges institutionalised forms of representation and dissemination of information.'
Last years
Whilst his work continued to be included in a number of major group shows, by 1989 he would refer to himself as 'retired from fluxus'. Becoming increasingly reclusive, he only allowed two retrospectives of his work in the last 30 years of his life; both were called 'A Heterospective' (loosely translated as a 'Collection of Othernesses'). The second, a large museum exhibition that was shown in Cologne and Barcelona, 2005–06, opened with a simple sign marked 'End' and ended with another stating 'Start'.In 2006 he won the prestigious Berlin Art Prize. From late 1971 Brecht lived in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, where he died, after a number of years of failing health, on 5 December 2008. His first marriage ended in 1963; he married for a second time, to Hertha Klang, in 2002. He lived with Donna Jo Brewer for a number of years between.
"John Cage seems to think that if he contacts the most people possible, they (or someone) will understand. I think, if someone understands, they will contact me (my work, the work). Leave the people alone."
See also
- Fluxus at Rutgers UniversityFluxus at Rutgers UniversityThe mid-20th-century art movement Fluxus had a strong association with Rutgers University.Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts, both key figures in the movement, originally met while they were students at Columbia University; though only together there for one year, soon after they both began teaching at...
- FluxusFluxusFluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
- George MaciunasGeorge MaciunasGeorge Maciunas was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He was a founding member of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers...
- Robert WattsRobert Watts (artist)Robert Watts was an American artist best known for his work as a member of the international Avant-garde art movement Fluxus. Born in Burlington, Iowa June 14, 1923, he became Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Jersey in 1953, a post he kept until 1984...
- John CageJohn CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
- Variations, contemporaneous compositions by John CageVariations (Cage)Variations is a series of works by American avant-garde composer John Cage. Some of the pieces in the series are seminal examples of indeterminate music, others are happenings: performance pieces executed according to the score....
- 4′33″, Cage's most famous composition, 1952
- Ray Johnson, a close friend and collaborator in Brecht's mail artRay JohnsonRaymond Edward Johnson , known primarily as a collagist and correspondence artist, was a seminal figure in the history of Neo-Dada and early Pop art...
- Something Else Press, run by Dick Higgins, publisher of 2 of Brecht's worksSomething Else PressSomething Else Press was founded by Dick Higgins in 1963. It published many important Intermedia texts and artworks by Higgins, Ray Johnson, Gertrude Stein, George Brecht, Daniel Spoerri, Bern Porter, John Cage, Emmett Williams and others. The Something Else Press was an early publisher of...
- Water Yam (artist's book)
- Fluxus 1, the first Flux YearboxFluxus 1Fluxus 1 is an artists' book edited and produced by the Lithuanian-American artist George Maciunas, containing works by a series of artists associated with Fluxus, the international collective of avant-garde artists primarily active in the 1960s and 1970s...
- One and Three Chairs, an artwork by Joseph Kosuth, 1965One and Three ChairsOne and Three Chairs, 1965, is a work by Joseph Kosuth. An example of conceptual art, the piece consists of a chair, a photograph of this chair, and an enlarged dictionary definition of the word "chair"...
External links
- The Something Else pamphlet Chance Imagery and Book of the Tumbler on Fire available as 2 pdfs on UbuWeb
- Repository, 1961, a piece by Brecht in the collection at MOMA
- Word Event • Exit, 1961
- An article about Robert Watts, including an interview with Brecht about the Yam Festival
- The first edition of V TRE, 1963, edited by Brecht, featuring contributions from Dieter Roth, Angus Maclise and Jackson Mac Low
- An Anthology of Chance, edited by La Monte Young; a pdf on Ubuweb
- Entrance to Exit, 1965; a Fluxfilm by Brecht
- A complete list of all Brecht's multiples
- Some late multiples by Brecht
- George Brecht at the-artists.org
- George Brecht retrospective
- Dutch Biography of Brecht
- George Brecht Resources
- George Brecht + James Tenney with George Maciunas, Entrance... (excerpt) 1:46 published on the Tellus Audio Cassette MagazineTellus Audio Cassette MagazineLaunched from the Lower East Side, Manhattan, in 1983 as a subscription only bimonthly publication, the Tellus cassette series took full advantage of the popular cassette medium to promote cutting-edge downtown music, documenting the New York scene and advancing experimental composers of the time...
- A good essay on Brecht by Anna Dezeuze
- New York Times obituary