Wednesday, September 16, 2009

The Arboretum

Last week, we went to the Arboretum for Rhea's birthday with our friends, Gabie, Michael and Liz, who took this really beautiful pic of us, You can check out more of the photos in her Flickr.

ART

To justify artist's professional, parasitic and elite status in society,
he must demonstrate artist's indispensability and exclusiveness,
he must demonstrate the dependability of audience upon him,
he must demonstrate that no one but the artist can do art.

FLUXUS ART-AMUSEMENT

To establish artist's nonprofessional status in society,
he must demonstrate artist's dispensability and
inclusiveness,
he must demonstrate the selfsufficiency of the audience,
he must demonstrate that anything can be art and anyone
can do it.

Therefore, art must appear to be complex, pretentious, profound,
serious, intellectual, inspired, skillful, significant, theatrical,
It must appear to be caluable as commodity so as to provide the
artist with an income.
To raise its value (artist's income and patrons profit), art is made
to appear rare, limited in quantity and therefore obtainable and
accessible only to the social elite and institutions.






Therefore, art-amusement must be simple, amusing,
upretentious,concerned with insignificances, require
no skill or countless rehearsals, have no commodity
or institutional value.

The value of art-amusement must be lowered by making
it unlimited, massproduced, obtainable by all and eventually
produced by all.

Fluxus art-amusement is the rear-guard without any
pretention or urge to participate in the competition of
"one-upmanship" with the avant-garde. It strives for
the monostructural and nontheatrical qualities of simple
natural event, a game or a gag. It is the fusion of Spikes
Jones Vaudeville, gag, children's games and Duchamp.



(Manifesto on Art / Fluxus Art Amusement by George Maciunas, 1965.)