![]() “How could you forget?” one of the women asked, to which the other responded, “How could you remember?” The set comes with instructions, including this one: “Please play with the chess set, but refrain from eating the chess pieces.” During my visit, two women fell into confusion over what the fruits and vegetables represented, which devolved into the perfect Fluxus conversation. His “Fruit and Vegetable Chess” from 1972 - that is, the idea is from 1972, even if the produce is more recent - uses limes and little ears of dried corn for the pawns, and a pineapple, coconut, pumpkin, turnip and cabbage for other pieces. One of the most amusing objects in the show was conceived by Larry Miller, a onetime student of Mr. Saito also made a set in the mid-60s called “Spice Chess,” which relied on scent rather than sound.) The trick, of course, is trying to remember which rustling, tinkling or clinking sounds stand for pawns, bishops or queens. The only way to distinguish the pieces within the cubes is to pick one up and shake it. It is a set of cubes divided into light and dark wood, and laid out on the familiar checkerboard grid. Robert Filliou’s little fold-up chess set from 1969 most directly invokes Duchamp: “Optimistic Box #3 - So much the better if you can’t play chess (you won’t imitate Marcel Duchamp).” Others carry out these ideas in elegant, poetic objects, like Takako Saito’s “Sound Chess,” reconstructed in 2003 from an earlier version. It is best spelled out in the exhibition in chess sets that replace strategy and reason with absurdity and chance. The idea of art (or life) as a game in which the artist reconfigures the rules is central to Fluxus. Unlike other ’60s movements, however, Fluxus had a kind of patron saint: Marcel Duchamp, the French artist who was associated with Dada and gave up painting in the earlier part of the 20th century in favor of ready-made objects - then supposedly gave up art to play chess (although he didn’t, really). And George Maciunas, one of the driving forces behind the group, organized Flux-mass, a mock-religious action performance at Rutgers in 1970. Watts after seeing a faculty exhibition in 1957, and the two met for lunch every week at the local Howard Johnson’s to discuss their common interest in art and science. According to the brochure that accompanies the exhibition, George Brecht, a chemist at Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, contacted Mr. The artists Allan Kaprow, Geoffrey Hendricks and Robert Watts, described by their fellow artist Carolee Schneemann as a kind of “Fluxus-seedbed,” all taught there in the late 1950s or ’60s. One of them is “at/around/beyond: Fluxus at Rutgers University” at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick. Attention in art history is often bestowed posthumously, however, and because 2011 was the 50th anniversary of Fluxus’s first New York project - an exhibition in book form of performance-related materials - half a dozen shows have been mounted locally to commemorate the group’s existence. ![]() ![]() Last year was a big one for Fluxus, despite the fact that this international network of artists, composers and poetic pranksters has been defunct for several decades. Robert Filliou’s “Optimistic Box #3 - So much the better if you can’t play chess (you won’t imitate Marcel Duchamp),” a fold-up chess set from 1969. ![]() Celebrating Fluxus, a Movement That Didn’t Create by the Rules By MARTHA SCHWENDENERĬollection of the Emily Harvey Foundation ![]()
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