George Maciunas

Thanks much, Chris and Ken, for the information on Maciunas and
the immortal Fluxus and related landmark sites and cites.


By coincidence Maciunas has come up on the Avant-Garde list,
where Dick Higgins has recently posted about him, Jasper Johns,
Rauschenberg and other artists. (Also, see below for upcoming
show by Higgins.)

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Forwarding mail by: dhiggins@xxxxxxxxxxxx () on Thu, 25 Apr
7:7  AM
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Johns was very "cute," not very articulate and awfully fond of
the act of  painting. We saw him less as a companion of
Rauschenberg, with whom he was  living, than as a protege. He
did the targets with faces, but most of his  work was just too
darned painterly, and thast did not fit in twith the  Fluxus
aesthetic. Rauschenberg is someone we wished were "aboard," of
course.


I knew who Johns was from maybe '58 on. One day at a concert I
introduced  myself to Ray Johnson; I asked him if he were
Jasper Johns. He laughed and  set me right, which is what I had
wanted. That began a  thirty seven year  friendship. To
complete the symmetry, one day when I saw Johns at a concert  I
asked him if he were Ray Johnson. "Nayo," he said nasally-and
walked  away. Could we have included a guy like that in Fluxus,
even in the  periphery as a "Fluxfriend?"


Maciunas saw Johns's work as derivative. Rauschenberg he
respected. But  Johns was either too painterly or, in his
objects, he was following  Rauschenberg. Stranghe-Maciunas, who
affected not to prize originality,  putting Johns down for
that.


Johns was a good friend and neighbor of Cage. They both worked
with Merce  Cunningham and for the Foundation for Contemporary
Performing Arts. I don't  know what-all else.


I had a run-in with Johnson once when I was working on Merce
Cunningham's  Something Else Press book CHANGES: NOTES ON
CHOREOGRAPHY. I had worked out  a color scheme for the
photograph on the jacket, using only orange and  blue, and I
took it to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where Merce was
performing, to show it to him in his dressing room. Merce liked
it, but  showed it over to Johns who was in the room. Johns
glared and said I had  made the woman on the back panel into a
monster! I should start again.  Well, she DID look like she had
a gas mask on, but okay-I took Merce's  liner pencil from his
make up tabel and darkened all the orange to dark  brown, and
in this form the jacket was approved. Frankly, I still prefer
the older version.


I've avoided Johns ever since. He has his charm, I guess. But
he does tend  to be a bit of a bully and his work tends to be
about work-it lacks  separable content. Though he cannot
entirely avoid them he tries to conceal  any personal elements.
When one critic decided to see if there were  personal
elements, when she traveled around Johns's native South
Carolina  looking up his family records and such-like, Johns is
said to have gotten  so mad that he wrote all the owners of
works she wanted to reproduce in her  book and asked the owners
to refuse permission for their works to be  reproduced in the
book. Or so the story goes.


Anyway, that's enough for now.


Bests

Dick Higgins


Dick Higgins
P O Box 27
Barrytown, NY 12507
        Tel: (914) 758-6488
        Fax: (914) 758-4416
        E-mail: dhiggins@xxxxxxxxxxx


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Forwarding mail by: ma@xxxxxxxxx (malgosia askanas) on Mon, 22
Apr  9:52 PM
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Dick Higgins: "The Buster Keaton Show"


May 2-25, 1996


479 Gallery Inc
594 Broadway, #401
New York, NY 10012
212-334-0909


Opening reception May 4, 1996, 5-8 pm


Performance of Dick Higgins' "Buster Keaton Enters Into
Paradise" at 8 pm  with:


Dick Higgins, Valarie Henry, Gregary Pilot, Arnold Vance, Louis
Schwartz, Malgosia Askanas



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