A bit of history...

The FLUXUS movement officially took shape in the early 1960s under the impulse of the Lithuanian-born American artist George MACIUNAS. It was in 1961 that he used the word "Fluxus" (meaning flux, flowing in Latin) for the first time as the title for an avant-garde magazine he planned to publish. The true public and collective kickoff took place in September 1962 during the Festum Fluxorum Fluxus in Wiesbaden, Germany. This highly unconventional music festival marked the birth of an international network of artists, poets, and musicians determined to shake up the rigid, bourgeois, and elitist codes of post-war institutional art.

At the core of the FLUXUS philosophy lies a radical desire to permanently dissolve the boundary between art and daily life, summarized by the concept of "art-life." Heavily influenced by the experimental music composition classes given by John CAGE in New York in the late 1950s, FLUXUS artists rejected the idea of the sacred, unique, timeless, and commercial art object. In 1963, MACIUNAS drafted and published the famous Fluxus Manifesto, a collaged and crossed-out document advocating for an "anti-art" accessible to everyone, non-academic, and deeply infused with a devastating humor, irony, and simplicity. For them, art should no longer be a static commodity displayed in sacralized museums, but a fleeting event, an attitude toward the world, shared collectively without any distinction between creator and spectator.

To express themselves, the members of the movement developed artistic forms that were entirely unprecedented and non-material for the time. They favored Happenings and especially Events (or action scores), minimalist and often absurd performances where mundane daily actions (drinking a glass of water, brushing one's teeth, bowing to the audience, or methodically destroying a piano) were elevated to the status of artworks. Meanwhile, to bypass the traditional art market, MACIUNAS centralized the production and distribution of Fluxboxes or Fluxkits starting in 1964. These were small plastic or wooden boxes containing found objects, impossible puzzles, photographs, or text cards, mass-produced and sold at very low prices by mail order, materializing the idea that art could be owned by anyone.

FLUXUS never thought of itself as a school with a single aesthetic style, but rather as an international constellation of free and undisciplined minds. Among the key figures gravitating around Maciunas's initiatives were major artists with diverse paths such as Yoko ONO, Nam June PAIK (who laid the foundations of video art on this occasion), George BRECHT, BEN Vautier in France (made famous by his handwriting pieces and "gestures"), or the German artist Joseph BEUYS, although the latter developed a more mystical vision of "social sculpture." Although the movement lost its central driving force and cohesion after the premature death of George MACIUNAS in 1978, the FLUXUS spirit deeply and permanently transformed the history of modern art. It decisively paved the way for conceptual art, relational aesthetics, contemporary performance, and even street art by completely redefining what can legitimately be considered art.

A few key exhibitions and festivals that have punctuated and documented the history of FLUXUS, from its origins to the present day:

- « International Festivals of New Music » (September 1962, Museum of Wiesbaden, Germany)
This is the official birth certificate of the movement. Organized by George Maciunas, this festival (titled Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik) took place over several weekends. Artists such as Nam June PAIK, Wolf VOSTELL, Dick HIGGINS, or Emmett WILLIAMS performed action scores by John Cage or George Brecht. It was here that the first pianos were destroyed on stage, laying the groundwork for Fluxus performance: a provocative, ephemeral, and musical art.

- « Festum Fluxorum Fluxus » (February 1963, Düsseldorf Academy of Arts, Germany)
Organized by George Maciunas and Joseph BEUYS (who was then a professor at the Academy), this event marked the European anchoring of the movement. Over two evenings of intensive concerts, the artists unsettled the bourgeois public with minimalist and absurd compositions. It was during this festival that Joseph Beuys publicly associated himself with the Fluxus spirit, introducing his own provocative actions that would long leave their mark on the German avant-garde.

- « Fluxus Symphony Orchestra » (June 1964, Carnegie Recital Hall, New York)
This event marked the major return and organization of the movement on American soil. Directed by George Maciunas, this concert applied industrial and collective methods to avant-garde music. Dozens of artists, including Yoko ONO, Ben PATTERSON, or Shigeko KUBOTA, performed conceptual pieces where traditional instruments were subverted (vacuuming, cutting objects, producing everyday sounds), asserting that "everything is music."

- « Flux-Fest » (1964-1965, Fluxhall, New York)
More than a single exhibition, this was a continuous series of events, performances, and presentations of "Fluxboxes" (boxes of games and objects assembled by Maciunas) organized in Maciunas's loft in Soho. This venue became the nerve center for the movement's production. It was here that the mass distribution of low-cost Fluxus art was invented, rejecting the traditional art market in favor of publishing objects with a playful purpose.

- « In the Spirit of Fluxus » (1993-1995, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis)
This major traveling retrospective exhibition (which traveled to New York, Chicago, and San Francisco) constituted the first major museum recognition of international scope after the death of George Maciunas. It brought together hundreds of objects, films, and ephemeral documents, reconstructing the comprehensive history of the movement and proving that Fluxus's anti-art attitude had permanently altered contemporary practices (performance, video art, installation).

- « Fluxus and Co. » (2012, Museum of Modern Art and Contemporary Art - MAMAC, Nice, France)
Nice and the French Riviera were among the major European hubs for Fluxus, thanks to artists like BEN (Benjamin Vautier), Robert FILLIOU, or George BRECHT. This exhibition celebrated the 50th anniversary of the movement by highlighting this specific French-European dimension, where humor, poetry, the creation of art "shops," and active public participation perfectly embodied Filliou's famous motto: "Art is what makes life more interesting than art."