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George Brecht (August 27, 1926 – December 5, 2008), born George Ellis MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer, as well as a professional chemist. He was a key member of Fluxus.
One of the originators of participatory art,[2] 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, and is widely seen as an important precursor to conceptual art.[3][4][5] 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.”[6]
Toward events
MacDiarmid changed his surname to 'Brecht' in 1945 [6]. After World War II, he studied chemistry. Then he took a job as a research chemist in 1953 (a job that he would keep until 1965). Over the next decade he would register 5 US patents and 2 co-patents[8].
Brecht became increasingly interested in art that explored chance. Initially influenced by Jackson Pollock, and Robert Rauschenberg, 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' … references included the Dadaists and Marcel Duchamp, whom Brecht considered the embodiment of the 'artist-researcher'.[10]
In 1957, Brecht sought out the artist Robert Watts, after seeing his work. This led to lunch meetings once a week for a number of years at a cafe between the university and Brecht's laboratory.[11] Watts' colleague Allan Kaprow would also regularly attend these informal discussions, which would lead directly to the setting up of the Yam Festival, 1962–63, seen as one of the most important precursors to Fluxus.[12] The meetings also led to both Brecht and Kaprow attending John Cage's class at The New School for Social Research, New York.
John Cage and the New School for Social Research
Brecht studied with John Cage between 1958 and 1959,[13] during which time he invented, and then refined, the Event Score[14][15] 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 Young, Yoko Ono and many other avant-garde artists who passed through these classes.[16] 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…
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."[17] 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'.
In October 1959, fresh from studying with Cage, Brecht organized his first one-man show. Called Towards Events: An Arrangement, it was neither an exhibition of objects or a performance, but somewhere in between.[19] Comprising works that emphasized time, the works could be manipulated by the viewer in various ways, revealing sounds, smells and tactile textures.
Michael Nyman, noticed 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.[1]" Another piece, Solo for Wind Instrument, contained the single instruction (putting it down).
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. This method of distribution – soon to become known as mail art – would become the basis for the buildup to the Yam Festival (May backwards), mid 1962 – May 1963, organized with Robert Watts. The mailed scores were intended to build anticipation for a monthlong series of events. 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'.[23] 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.
Fluxus
Fluxus was to grow out of George Maciunas' friendship with the artists; his conception of Fluxus was based on LEF, a communist organization set up in Russia in the 1920s to help create a new socialist culture [25] 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.
'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…." [26]
Brecht would remain a prominent member of Fluxus until Maciunas' death, 1978. His work was included in each of the major collections and performances. An indication of his importance within the group is captured in a letter from Maciunas to Emmett Williams, April 1963:
'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, Paik & Brecht (if a midway can be found!) It would be very bad without Brecht. He is the best man in New York (I think)….' [27]
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 [28]. 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.[29] Many of Brecht's other Fluxus multiples involved absurdist puzzles which were impossible to resolve in a traditional manner, such as the Maciunas Puzzle.[30]
Maciunas' decision to picket a Stockhausen concert of Originale in August 1964 is often seen to have alienated Brecht [35] 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.[36]
He arrived in Rome, April 1965; from there he moved to France, and in 1968, Brecht moved to London, where he formed a new company, 'Brecht and MacDiarmid', which proposed a number of Land Mass Translocations.
In November 1969, Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra (see [4]) 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.
Other works completed in this period include a performance and lecture 'with slides, music and fireworks' called The Chemistry of Music given at the ICA, which offered a critique of the lecture format as the predominating method of teaching; and a play entitled 'Silent Music' broadcast on West German Radio as part of celebrations for John Cage's 75th birthday. 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'.
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. [42]
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