In the summer of 1958 Allan Kaprow, Robert Watts and George Brecht, the latter a scientist and the former art instructors, completed a grant proposal titled "Project in Multiple Dimensions." This proposal was ultimately unsuccessful in their desire to establish an institute for experimental art on the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers University. However, in their introduction they summarize what they perceived to be the characteristic features of the New American "advance guard."
In all the arts, we
are struck by a general loosening of forms which in the past were relatively
closed, strict, and objective, to ones which are more personal, free, random,
and open, often suggesting in their seemingly casual formats an endless
changefulness and boundlessness. In
music, it has led to the use of what was once considered noise; in painting and
sculpture, to materials that belong to industry and the wastebasket; in dance,
to movements which are not “graceful” but which come from human action
nevertheless. There is taking place a
gradual widening of the scope of the imagination, and creative people are
encompassing in their work what has never before been considered art.1
This
theme of the expanding boundaries of artistic activity to include materials and
activities that were previously viewed as lying outside of the realm of the
arts, was intimately linked to this generation of artists’ attempts to move
beyond the suffocating institutional hegemony, and triumphal subjectivity of
the Abstract Expressionists. A refrain
that occurs constantly in artists’ writings of this period is their search for
new materials.
Allan
Kaprow in his eulogy to Jackson Pollock, published one month after the completion
of the “Project in Multiple Dimensions”, couples this preoccupation with new
‘materials’ with its corollary ‘concrete.’
Pollock...left us at
the point where we must become preoccupied with and even dazzled by the space
and objects of our everyday life...Objects of every sort are materials for the
new art...all will become materials for the new concrete art.2
This quest
for a re-engagement with the materials of everyday life is central to a larger
paradigmatic shift that was occurring amongst experimental artists during the
late 1950s, particularly amongst American artists. At its most basic, this anti-formalist and
de-subjectivising shift is premised upon a retreat from the representational
(abstracted, illusionistic) to a presentational (concrete, anti-illusionistic)
strategy.
Leo
Steinberg in his article “Other Criteria”3 traces, what he describes as this
“post-Modernist” strategy to the early 1950s.
Through the works of Robert Rauschenberg he outlines a move away from
the verticality of the traditional picture plane to one in which it is
approached as a horizontal flatbed picture plane. This new orientation allowed the picture
plane to admit a whole new order of materials and objects within its field:
The flatbed picture
plane makes its symbolic allusion to hard surfaces such as tabletops, studio
floors, charts, bulletin boards‑any receptor surface on which objects are
scattered, on which data is entered, on which information may be received,
printed, impressed...4
The
significance of the printing press analogy, and by implication the
repositioning of the printed page as an important locus of experimental
activity, is a key feature of experimental art from the 1950s onwards. Steinberg locates the significance of the:
tilt of the picture
plane from vertical to horizontal as expressive of the most radical shift in
the subject matter of art, the shift from
nature to culture. [my emphasis]5
While
Steinberg’s article deals specifically with Rauschenberg he neglects to address
the presence of two formative influences (Marcel Duchamp and John Cage) who
shaped the formation of this new attitude and who, by letting “the world in
again,”6 gave artists in all media the permission to
experiment across and between disciplines.
This activity has since come to be known under the umbrella term of
“intermedia.”7
Both
Duchamp and Cage shifted the terrain of what was conventionally understood as
art and artistic activity. Duchamp’s
ready-mades exposed the institutional and contextual frameworks through which
objects acquire their status as art objects.
Cage’s use of chance and indeterminacy as compositional strategies, and
his incorporation of everyday sounds opened up new approaches for artists
working in all media. It is, however,
Cage who I want to discuss as having the most immediate impact on the working
methods of experimental artists in the latter part of the 1950s.
While
Cage’s long career as an experimental musician had a profound effect on the
development of avant-garde music, he also had an equally powerful influence on
a range of artists working in other media.
Within the American context, the locus of influence is most concretely
manifested in the students who attended the second of the courses he taught at
the New School for Social Research, New York, between 1958-60. This class was publicized as a course in
“Experimental Composition” and was described as “a course in musical
composition with technical, musicological and philosophical aspects, open to
those with or without previous training.”8 Amongst the group of participants that formed
the core group during the 1958 session were Allan Kaprow, George Brecht, Al
Hansen (artists), Dick Higgins, Jackson Mac Low (poets), Scott Hyde
(photographer) and Toshi Ichiyanagi (musician).9
It
is particularly significant that of the members forming the core group there
was only one musician. When asked by an
interviewer, “Wasn’t it surprising to have painters in a music class like
that?” Cage replied:
It wasn’t surprising
to me because I had, before that, in the late 1940s and the early 1950s been
part and parcel of the Artists Club. I
had early seen that musicians were the people who didn’t like me. But the painters did. The people who came to the concerts which I
organized were very rarely musicians - either performing or composing. The audience was made up of people interested
in painting and sculpture.10
The
attraction to non-musicians of Cage’s compositional strategy, through which he
gave artist's permission to foreground the actions and sounds of everyday life,
was the realization that anything now became potential material in the art making process. Allan Kaprow reflecting on this period states
“it was apparent to everyone immediately that these two moves in music [chance
& noise] could be systematically carried over to any of the other arts.”11
This
presentational strategy offered a new freedom for artists to utilize the
objects and materials of everyday life, and through this practice, to reconnect
with the social and cultural contexts from which they had been taken. The territory between art and life becomes
increasingly blurred, and it is within this intermediary zone that these
experimental artists would situate their activities. This rejection of abstraction and
representation, and the preoccupation with physical materiality can be
summarized by the term concretism. These
concerns were not unique to the circle of artists attending Cage’s composition
class.
The Gutai
(concrete) Art Association, founded in Japan in 1954, railed against the art of
their time as;
an illusion with which, by human hand
and by way of fraud, materials such as paint, pieces of cloth, metals, clay or
marble are loaded with false significance, so that, instead of just presenting
their own material self, they take on the appearance of something else.”12
Their
manifesto (1956) continues;
Gutai art does not change the material:
it brings it to life...If one leaves the material as it is, presenting it just
as material, then it starts to tell us something and speaks with a mighty
voice.13
In
a similar vein the Brazilian Noigandres group who together with Eugen Gomringer
in Germany (1956) formed the international concrete poetry movement, state in
one of the movement’s basic texts that the:
concrete poem is an object in and by itself, not an interpreter
of exterior objects and/or more or less subjective feelings. Its material:
word (sound, visual form, semantical change).14
In a
similar vein the Nouveaux Realistés (“nouvelle approches perceptives du réel”),
declared in their first manifesto (1960) that;
Easel
painting...served its time. It now lives
out the last seconds, still occasionally sublime, of a long monopoly. What else is proposed? The thrilling
adventure of the real perceived in itself and not through the prism of
conceptual or imaginative transcription.15
Finally,
the Wiener Aktionismus artists (Hermann Nitsch, Günter Brus, Otto Müehl and
Rudolf Schwarzkogler), developed a performative action painting that situated
the body as the concrete focus of their activities, and was based on similar
conclusions that Kaprow reached in his appraisal of Pollock’s legacy. Otto Müehl wrote in 1962 of his efforts to
move beyond easel painting and how this led to experiments with sculptural
objects;
In our painting we
recognise materials as the real objects of our works. It’s a question of presenting material,
matter itself.16
A year
later he presents his first public action in which the body becomes the
supporting structure, he writes;
Material action is
painting gone beyond the picture surface; the human body, a set table or a room
becomes the picture surface, time being added to the dimension of the body, of
space.17
By
the late 1950s Leo Steinberg’s observations on the shift of the picture plane,
from vertical to horizontal, would be extended directly into the environment
itself. Both George Brecht and Allan
Kaprow would move decisively beyond the limits of the canvas as a result of
their encounter with Cage. Kaprow would
develop his concept of environments, which would then lead him into Happenings
and George Brecht developed his practice of Events. While Brecht recognized the similarities
between the two activities, both having come “from a dissatisfaction with the
static quality of so much work at the time,”18 he was also careful to distinguish between the
two different approaches,
It seems to me that
events in general are either a viewpoint on life or, in their more objective
form, in the form of scores to be realized, notations, they’re more personal
and they don’t even have to be performed outwardly. Some of them can be realized mentally too, so
the whole emphasis seems quite different.19
The
emergence within this expanded activity of the importance of printed
instructions (Kaprow), scores (Brecht), as well as a whole range of graphically
notated compositions by other artists, repositioned the printed page as a vital
initiator of activities through the engagement of the viewer in a process of
interpretation and performance. A seminal
publication that announced the newly activated and presentational role of the
printed page in this period is An
Anthology (1963).
The
origins of An Anthology trace a path
that a number of artists were to take in the early 1960s, the move from the
West Coast to New York. The material in An Anthology had originally been
intended for a special issue of the magazine Beatitude/East, which was an offshoot of the original Beatitude that was based in San
Francisco’s North Beach. The first issue
of Beatitude was published in May
1959 under the direction of Allen Ginsberg, Bob Kaufman and John Kelly. Originally planned as a weekly newsletter
(which it never was), Beatitude was a
vital part of the North Beach beat community.
The magazine’s name referred to a quite specific interpretation of
‘beat,’ which Ginsberg would later describe as “the necessary beatness or
darkness that precedes opening up to light, egolessness, giving room for
religious illumination.”20 In the fall of 1960, Chester Anderson, one of
Beatitude’s editors, had come to New
York and began publishing Beatitude/East.21 Anderson
was also a poet and had been frequenting New York poetry readings and had
attended a reading by Jackson Mac Low and La Monte Young in which they
presented a number of experimental works by writers and composers. Anderson asked Young if he was interested in
guest editing an issue of Beatitude/East,
and Young accepted. Jackson Mac Low
wrote later that Anderson gave Young “free rein to put in any new musical
scores, poems or other verbal art, ‘concept art’ (Henry [Flynt] had recently
invented the term), and anything else he might find appropriate.”22
 | ||
La Monte Young (ed), An Anthology, La Monte Young and Jackson Mac Low publishers, New York, 1963, 2nd ed. 1970
|
Young
himself had recently arrived in New York during September of the same
year. He had moved from Berkeley where
he was a graduate student, in order to enroll in Richard Maxfield’s electronic
music course. Young quickly became an
active participant within the community of experimental artists and was ideally
positioned to gather materials for Beatitude/East.23 In June
of the next year, after Anderson had been in possession of the materials for
some time, he handed them back to Young as plans for the special issue had
fallen through, and he was moving back to California.24 A chance mention of
this failed project in the company of George Maciunas (future impresario of
Fluxus), elicited his offer to publish the material.25 In late September 1961,
Maciunas was preparing the mechanicals for what was now called An Anthology. Soon thereafter Maciunas moved to Germany and
remained there until 1963. Since he was
now unable to be the publisher, the job was taken over by Young and Mac Low,
and because the pages were printed piecemeal (and only when funds allowed), the
publishing process was a lengthy one.
An Anthology was finally published in
May 1963. Young was credited as the
editor, Maciunas was listed as the designer and both Young and Mac Low were
credited as co-publishers. Published in
an almost square format (9”x8”), with fifty-six pages in a number of different
colors, it was comprised of eighty-eight works, including two tipped-in sheets
and two envelopes glued onto separate pages.
The full title of the publication was:
an anthology of
chance operations concept art anti-art meaningless work natural disasters
indeterminacy improvisation plans of action stories diagrams music dance
constructions mathematics poetry essays compositions.26
An
integral feature of An Anthology is
Macunias’ bold typographic designs that introduce the first seven pages, and
subsequently preface each individual artists’ sections. As a structuring device for these assorted
works his typography provides a clear demarcation between sections, as well as a
distinct and engaging identity to the publication. Almost half of the dated works are from 1960
and the second largest grouping comes from 1961. Thus, An
Anthology represents a quite specific snapshot of experimental works by a
collection of twenty-four contributors who encompass the fields of music,
visual arts, dance, performance/events and poetry.27
As
the extended title of An Anthology
indicates, most of the works chosen for publication functioned as initiators of
activity and demanded participation by the reader/performer in
 | ||
La Monte Young, Composition 1960 #9, 1980
|
their interpretation
and realization. In varying degrees they
all function as scores or compositions to be activated by the reader. Some of the works were constructed through
chance operations, while others reveal a more traditional compositional
structure, but what unites most of them are the varying degrees of
indeterminacy implicit in their completion.
It is clear that this publication owes a large debt to John Cage, indeed
the first work is dedicated to Cage (Brecht’s “Motor Vehicle Sundown
(Event)”). An Anthology also contains the first publication of Henry Flynt’s
“Concept Art,” an important text that underscored the central position of
written language and the printed page in the works of these experimental
artists. Flynt begins his article by
writing;
Concept art is first of all an art of which the material is concepts, as the material of e.g. music
is sound. Since concepts are closely bound up with language, concept art is a kind
of art in which the material is language.
That is, unlike e.g. a work of music, in which the music proper (as
opposed to notation, analysis, etc.) is just sound, concept art proper will
involve language.28
With
this article Flynt illuminates the theoretical underpinnings of many of the
works in An Anthology, as well as the
conceptual thrust that accompanies working with ‘concrete’ materials, as
discussed earlier in this chapter. Since
however, concepts have no shape unless expressed linguistically, he thus
acknowledges language’s intrinsic partnership in communicating the ‘material’
of concepts.
One
example, of the many in An Anthology,
that illustrates the centrality of language in concept art, are the following
instructions contained in a score by La Monte Young.
Composition 1960 #3
Announce to the
audience when the piece will begin and end if there is a limit on
duration. It may be of any duration.
Then announce that
everyone may do whatever he wishes for the duration of the composition.
5.14.60
In
contrast to the language-based pieces, a number of works are presented as
completely graphic scores, and through their abrogation of language demand the
 | ||
Diter Rot, white page with holes, 1963
viewer interpret conceptually, in action or sound, what is presented only visually. One example of this is Toshi
Ichiyanagi’s piece titled “Mudai #1.” The work is composed of seven calligraphic-ooking brush strokes or
abstract splotches of ink scattered across an otherwise empty page. The work is not accompanied with any
instructions as to how it is to be performed.
La Monte Young recounts performing this score: |
I had been thinking
about the piece up to the moment of the concert, and I really hadn’t come up
with anything that was appropriate.
Finally, when I passed a vegetable stand on the way to the concert, I
decided to buy thirty cents’ worth of string beans. When I got there, I counted them.29
Another
exception to the language-based concept work in An Anthology is Diter Rot’s work “White page with holes.”30 This
loose page is exactly what the title states it is, a lightweight card stock
with ten holes, of two sizes, punched across the sheet. Laid across a page of printed material or
held up in front of the viewer, this page is capable of creating an infinite
number of indeterminate compositions.
This work can function in two interlinked ways, as a matrix, that when
placed upon a surface, allows the isolated elements to be viewed and read, or
as a sheet of holes through which the world can enter. Jackson Mac Low recounts performing Rot’s page as part of a
concert at the Living Theater on February 5, 1962, to raise money for the
publication of An Anthology:
...I burned ten
holes through a rectangle of much heavier cardboard, with some regard, but not
too much for Dieter’s pattern. I placed
a ladder on the stage and spread out on the floor around it a number of books,
magazines and newspapers. Then I mounted
a ladder to its top, dropped the cardboard and read whatever words were visible
through the holes. I repeated this
action several times.31
An
examination of the works in An Anthology
reveals that over seventy-five percent of them require some form of
performative activity by the viewer.
While a number of them can be realized imaginatively, others need to be
performed in order to be completed. It
is in this sense that An Anthology
must be considered as a unique instruction manual to a pivotal period in the
history of post-World War II arts in the United States. This performative aspect confirms John
Walker’s assertion that one of the defining features in the development of
artists’ periodicals was the merging of art and the art periodical. Additionally, An Anthology embodies one of the three features he distinguishes as
emerging in art periodicals of this period, which is “the periodical as
anthology or art gallery.”32
An Anthology would also serve as an
early and exemplary ‘anthological’ model for the publication of experimental
and conceptual works, as well as
 |
| Terry Riley, Concert for two pianists and tape recorders (two page score), 1961 |
illustrating the central position of printed
matter within the experimental arts of this period. Formed out of a community of predominantly
New York-based artists, An Anthology
included many artists who would later become important figures in the fields of
experimental music, dance, poetry, performance and video. For George Maciunas, it was this publishing
experience, coupled with his introduction by La Monte Young to a community of
avant-garde artists, that would set him on the path in establishing the printed
matter basis of Fluxus, and the Fluxus community itself
Finally,
there is one issue that needs to be addressed in regard to An Anthology, and that is how to define it as a publication? With
the knowledge of its history as a planned issue of a periodical, it cannot be
totally divorced from this originating context.
However, the failure of this endeavor reduced it to its essential
elements, and it’s apparent that an ‘anthology’ is a collection of material
that can be realized in both a periodical and book format. The lack of periodicity of An Anthology, coupled with Young’s lack
of interest in doing another issue, defines it as a single publishing venture.33 While it
is often referred to as a book by its contributors and commentators, it is
rather surprisingly omitted in two of the more influential publications that
survey the history of artists’ books.34
In
conclusion, An Anthology embodies all
the problems of definition that are intrinsic to the intermedia works that it
contains. An Anthology stands as a hybrid publication that is situated
between publishing genres, and it is precisely this equivocal in-between
quality that would position the periodical, and more generally printed matter,
as important players in the expanded arts activities of the 1960s and 1970s.
Stephen Perkins, 2001
Notes
1. Jona Marter, ed., Off
Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-Garde, 1975-1963, (Rutgers:The State University and The Newark
Museum, 1999).
2. Allan
Kaprow, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” Artnews
September (1958): 56-57.
3. Leo
Steinberg, Other Criteria (New York:
Oxford Press, 1972). This essay
had its beginnings
as a lecture presented in 1968 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Its final form is the version printed in this
book.
4. Ibid., 84.
5. Ibid., 84.
6. Ibid., 90.
7. Dick Higgins
first used the term intermedia in his
article “Intermedia” in: Something Else Newsletter 1, no.
1 (1966). In the following passage Peter
Frank offers a
succinct definition of ‘intermedia’ and distinguishes this term from the similar,
but distinct, term “multi-media.”
The term ‘intermedia’ applies to art work which manifests
characteristics of more than one art form, drawing on various of the otherwise
distinct disciplines—the traditional, academically-defined practices of
painting, musical composition, poetry, and other art forms—to establish an
indivisible hybrid. The ‘multi-media’
rubric pertains to work in which disparate artistic practices are superimposed;
although separating them destroys the work originally intended, the separated
aspects function as coherent artistic phenomena, and thereby at least as
‘souvenirs’ of the original. Thus,
visual poetry is an intermedium: if the visual aspect is removed, no verbal
aspect remains.
In: Peter
Frank, “Postwar Performance and Intermedia: The Technological Impetus and the Musical Paradigm,” in Avant Garde 7 (1992): 35.
8. George
Brecht, 1991, Notebooks I, II, III. Edited by Dieter Daniels and Herman Braun (Köln: Verlag der Buchandlung
Walther Konig), n.p. [Quote from footnotes in Notebook I]
9. Other
participants were: Steve Addiss, Carol Galante, John Klein, Al Kouzel and Robert Weblein. The informality of this class encouraged friends of the participants to attend
individual classes, including: Jim Dine, Harvey
Gross, Larry Poons and George Segal.
10. Michael Kirby
and Richard Schechner, “An Interview with John Cage,” in Happenings
and Other Acts, ed. Mariellen Sandform (London/New York: Routledge, 1995), 67.
11. Allan Kaprow, The Blurring of Art and Life (Berkeley:
University of California Press,
1993), 224.
12. Jiro
Yoshihara, “The Gutai Manifesto (1956),” in Theories
and Documents of Contemporary Art, ed. Kristine
Stiles and Peter Selz (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1996), 695.
13. Ibid., 695.
14. Augusto de
Campos, Decio Pigatari and Harold de Campos, “Pilot Plan for Concrete
Poetry (1958),” in Concrete Poetry: A
World View, ed. Ellen Solt (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1970), 72.
15. Pierre
Restany, “The Nouveaux Realistés Declaration of Intention (1960),” in Theories and Documents of
Contemporary Art, ed. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996), 695.
16. Otto Mühl
letter to Erika Stocker, January 14, 1962, in Viennese Aktionism:Vienna 1960-1971, ed. Hubert
Klocker (Klagenfurt: Ritter Verlag, 1989), 186.
17. Ibid., 186.
18. Michael Nyman,
“George Brecht,” Studio International
November/December (1976):
263.
19. Ibid.,
263-264.
20. Allen
Ginsberg, prologue to Beat Culture and
the New America: 1950-1965, by Lisa
Phillips (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1995), 18. This theme of
egolessnes would also be a central feature in John Cage’s approach to
art making,
as well as the spiritual dimension reflected in his interest in Zen Buddhism,
both of which can be broadly interpreted as the search for ‘illumination.’
21. I have only
been able to confirm that Anderson published one issue of Beatitude/East,
this was issue #16 and it was published between September and October
1960, and printed by Ansgar Press. It is
unclear whether Anderson’s move to New
York was temporary or permanent. On the
back cover of Beatitude, 15, June, (1960),
there is an editorial that notes: “During the summer months, Beatitude will be edited by C.V.J. Anderson,
and all manuscripts should be sent to
him c/o Stamm, 103 MacDougal St., New York, New York, through
August.”
22. Jackson Mac
Low, “How Maciunas Met the New York Avant Garde,” Art & Design 28 (1993):
29.
23. Other artists
who moved from the San Francisco Bay Area at this time were:Joseph
Byrd, Simone Forti, Terry Jennings, Walter de Maria, Robert Morris and Diane
Wakoski.
24. Barbara
Haskell, Blam! (New York: Whitney
Museum of American Art, 1984), 55.
25. Maciunas was taking publicity shots of
Young and Mac Low for a new music series he was organizing at his AG gallery (a partnership with
Almus Salcius). Maciunas had met Young
in the Spring of 1961 when both of them had enrolled in Richard Maxfield’s
electronic music class, a continuation of Cage’s
classes at the New School for
Social Research.
26. An Anthology was republished in 1970 by
Heiner Friedrich, New York. With the exception
of the color sequencing of the pages, this edition is substantially the same as the
first edition. This 1970 edition is the source
for the present study.
27. The
contributors to An Anthology were:
George Brecht, Claus Bremer, Earle Brown,
Joseph Byrd, John Cage, Walter de Maria, Henry Flynt, Yoko Ono, Dick Higgins,
Toshi Ichiyanagi, Terry Jennings, Dennis Johnson, Ray Johnson, Ding
Dong
(George Maciunas), Jackson MacLow, Richard Maxfield, Malka Safro, Simone
Forti, Nam June Paik, Terry Riley, Diter Rot, James Waring, Emmett Williams,
Christian Wolff, La Monte Young.
Jackson Mac
Low in his article, “How Maciunas Met the New York Avant Garde,” Art & Design, 28 (1993): 38, clears up and clarifies some of the discrepancies
in names and attribution of works in the 1970 version of An Anthology.
Specifically he states that the name Malka Safro replaces Robert Morris’
from the first edition. He neglects to
notice that within the black border on the left of
these photos in the 1970 edition is handwritten “by Anthony Cox,” a credit he
acknowledges was in the first edition.
David Degener, who’s name appears in
both editions had no work in either. He
credits the entry Ding Dong to George Maciunas, and states that “Dennis” is
the former composer Dennis Johnson.
The highly
unusual name Malka Safro led me to speculate that it was a pseudonym, however a reference to Malka
Safro appears in the magazine\Lightworks 20/21 (1990): 55, in
which Henry Martin relates the various staged situations
that Ray Johnson would create when he received visitors to his home:
Another time while receiving a visit from Sam
Wagstaff, Ray’s closet door opened and out came a young lady, Malka Safro. This so startled Wagstaff that he fled the
premises...
28. La Monte
Young, ed., An Anthology (New York:
Heiner Friedrich, 1970), n.p.
29. Young
performed this piece at the series of concerts he organized at Yoko Ono’s loft
between Dec. 1960 and June 1961. The
specific date is most likely May 1961 when he himself presented an evening
of works. His account of performing Ichiyanagi’s
score comes from: Richard Kostelanetz, The Theatre of Mixed-Means (New York: RK Editions,
1980), 202. For a listing of concerts in
Yoko Ono’s loft
see: Henry Flynt, “Mutation of the Vanguard: Pre-Fluxus, During Fluxus,
Late Fluxus,” in Ubi Fluxus ibi motus:
1990-1962 (Milan: Mazzotta,1990),103,
105.
30. In the
original 1963 version of An Anthology
this page was titled “Black page with holes,”
although the cardstock was white. See:
Jackson Mac Low, “How Maciunas
Met the New York Avant Garde,” 28 Art
& Design (1993): 43, for an explanation
of this discrepancy.
31. Ibid., 43.
32. John Walker, “Periodicals
Since 1945,” in The Art Press: Two
Centuries of Art Magazines ed.
Trevor Fawcett and Clive Phillpot (London: The Art Book Co., 1976), 50.
33. Maciunas
states in his interview with Larry Miller that, “La Monte wasn’t interested in doing a second Anthology
book.” Larry Miller, “Transcript of the videotaped interview with George Maciunas,
March 24, 1978,” in Fluxus etc./Addenda 1, ed. John Hendricks (New York: Ink, 1983), 15.
34. These two
books are respectively:
Joan Lyons,
ed., Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthology
and Sourcebook (New
York: Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1987).
Johanna
Drucker, The Century of Artists’ Books
(New York: Granary Press,
1995).
