Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life

by Jacquelynn Baas

Published by the University of Chicago Press with the Hood Museum of Art, 2011.

Fluxus – from the Latin, meaning “to flow” – was a radical, international network of artists, composers, and designers in the 1960s and 1970s noted for blurring the boundaries between what we term “art” and what we think of as everyday life. Following the work of Fluxus founder and impresario George Maciunus, Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life presents a variety of objects by a range of international artists that express the Fluxus life-enriching mission.

Based on a traveling exhibition organized by Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art, this book chronicles the movement in the form of an art self-help book, playfully providing answers to fourteen key questions such as “Art – what’s it good for?” via Fluxus art works. With an introduction by curator Jacquelynn Baas and essays by Fluxus artist Ken Friedman and Fluxus scholars Hannah Higgins and Jacob Proctor, Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life makes an original contribution to our understanding of this provocative moment in modern art, while empowering readers to challenge the presumptions we bring to the concept and practice of art making.