The Fluxus Newspaper Enlivened an Exuberant Era With Absurd Reporting and Ebullient Layouts

1960s: Days of Rage

June 3

"There are those who say the Village Voice — with its wide-ranging coverage of culture and politics, writers battling each other in print, essential apartment and Help Wanted classifieds, outré advertising, and provocative graphic design — was the Internet before the Internet. Well, another ink-and-paper contender for that dubious honor might be The Fluxus Newspaper, which featured a visual cacophony allied to an editorial absurdity that certainly chimes with the sizable chunk of the Information Superhighway that prizes dazzling eye candy and eyewash alike. The paper was the brainchild of Cooper Union grad George Maciunas (1931-78), and all 11 issues of the publication have been gathered into a single volume, available from Primary Information. Other than a bit of back-cover commentary, the editors have let the fervent typography, snippets of news, Frankenstein-esque conglomerations of photos and clip art, mix-and-match quotations, promo listings for various purveyors of the Fluxus arts — 'ROBERT WATTS: rocks in compartmented plastic box, marked by their weight $3' — all presented in cleverly rambunctious layouts, do the talking. The first issue, dated January 1964, features a portrait of portly white guys with canes, top hats, and whiskers looking like a class reunion of robber barons, under the headline 'NEW FLUXUS EDITORIAL COUNCIL.' On that issue's last page, a row of passport-size photos of women with pronounced hairstyles foreshadow the bewigged band members on the Rolling Stones' die-cut Some Girls album cover, from 1978. ... Maciunas encouraged artists, designers, musicians, and free thinkers of all stripes to collaborate in musical, sound, theatrical, video, and/or street performances, to cull new concatenations of visual art from the surrounding culture, and to, as he proclaimed in 1963's Fluxus Manifesto, 'PROMOTE A REVOLUTIONARY FLOOD AND TIDE IN ART … to be fully grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes and professionals.' One wonders just how far into his cheek Maciunas had planted his tongue, since Fluxus relished the absurd über alles, welcoming such aesthetic provocateurs as mail-art virtuoso Ray Johnson, video pioneer Nam June Paik, social shaman Joseph Beuys, one-time Velvet Underground percussionist Angus MacLise, and many other cultural rabble-rousers into its loosely regimented ranks. ..."
Voice