The Life of the Unfinished

At this stage, I took a shot of the drawing because I thought it might be finished.  Elizabeth thought so, too, but decided to continue working on it.  When she had all the facets of the paper bag carefully drawn (see previous post), she said, “I liked it better before.”

I’ve talked about the “Unfinished” before:  https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/yoko-ono-and-romantic-irony/

An article on this subject appeared in the NYtimes just a few days ago, worth reading:

“The Fascination of the Unfinished, “ by Roberta Smith

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/arts/design/the-fascination-of-the-unfinished.html?hp&_r=0

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Fluxus

Fluxus art flourished, or should we say “flowed,” abundantly in the 1960’s.  The word Fluxus comes from Latin “to flow.”  Like its grand-daddy  Dada, Fluxus celebrates chance occurrences and simple everyday objects and events.   It reminds us to pay attention—to see and to listen.  Not just to look and label, but to, errrm,( what other word is there) to see.  Ditto in the auditory department.  Listen!  Wherever you are, you can go into a state of seeing and listening.  Waiting for a bus, waiting for the light to change, waiting for the recitation of the menu to be over, waiting for the water to run hot…take a moment to notice what’s happening in your senses.  Needless to say, this involves a sense of humor.

A great Fluxus moment is presented to us by a snow fall. When you’re done with the shoveling, treat yourself to a walk around the block or just a look around the yard.  Take the camera, it helps you see.  Ten minutes and your optic nerve will tingle and your brain will hummmmm.  Dried grasses and plants take on the look of brush strokes, like calligraphy.

I particularly love what an overnight snow fall does to my back yard sculptures, my lessons of earlier years, cast in stone.  It’s as if they were melting.

Some well-known artists who have worked in the Fluxus mode are John Cage, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, and Yoko Ono.

For a useful article on Fluxus turn to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus

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