George Brecht

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George Brecht
Birth name	George MacDiarmid
Born	August 27, 1926(1926-08-27) New York, United States
Died	December 5, 2008 (aged 82) Cologne, Germany
Nationality	American
Training	New School for Social Research
Movement	Fluxus, Conceptual Art

George Brecht (August 27, 1926 – December 5, 2008), born George MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer as well as a professional chemist who worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Mobil Oil. He was a key member of Fluxus, the international group of avant-garde artists centred around George Maciunas, having been involved with the group from the first performances in Wiesbaden 1962 until Maciunas' death in 1978.

He is most famous for his Event Scores such as Drip Music 1962, ('a source of dripping water and an empty vessel are arranged so that the water falls into the vessel / Second version: Dripping.' ^[1]) (see [1]) and is widely seen as an important precursor to conceptual art ^[2].

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early Life 1.2 Toward Events 2 External links 3 Notes

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early Life

Brecht was born George MacDiarmid in New York, August 27, 1926 ^[3]. His father, Ellis MacDiarmid, was a professional flautist who had toured with John Philip Sousa's marching band before settling in New York to play bass flute for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the NBC Symphony Orchestra ^[4]. He moved with his mother to Atlantic City, New Jersey, after his father's death when Brecht was 8 years old ^[5]. He enlisted for military service in 1943, and it was whilst he was stationed near the Black Forest Germany, 1945, that he changed his surname to 'Brecht' - 'not in reference to Bertolt Brecht, but because he liked the sound of the name'.^[4]

After the war, he studied chemistry at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy & Science, finishing his degree and marrying his first wife Marceline in 1951. After working briefly for Charles Pfizer & Co as a quality control inspector, he took a job as a research chemist for Johnson & Johnson in 1953, settling in New Jersey. Over the next decade he would register 5 US patents and 2 co-patents ^[5] including four patents for tampons. His only son Eric was born in New Jersey in 1953.

[edit] Toward Events

Whilst working as a chemist (a job that he would keep until 1965), Brecht became increasingly interested in art that explored chance. Initially influenced by Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg - Rauschenberg's exhibition of grass seeds, Growing Painting, 1954, left 'a significant impression on him' ^[5] - he began to formulate ideas about 'chance method schemes' that would eventually be printed as a booklet by the Something Else Press as Chance Imagery (1957/66). The work was 'a systematic investigation of the role of chance in the 20th century in the fields of science and avant-garde art... reveal[ing] his respect for Dadaist and surrealist projects as well as for the more complex aspects of the work of Marcel Duchamp, whom he considered the embodiment of the 'artist-researcher' ^[6]. Artworks in this period included bed-sheets stained with ink he called Chance Paintings.

In 1957, Brecht sought out the artist Robert Watts, after seeing his work exhibited at Douglass College, Ruthers University, where Watts taught. This led to lunch meetings once a week for a number of years at a cafe between the university and Brecht's laboratory ^[7]. Watts' colleague Allan Kaprow would also regularly attend these informal meetings. Discussions at these lunches would lead directly to the setting up of the Yam Festival, 1962-63, by Watts and Brecht, seen as one of the most important precursors to Fluxus ^[8]. The meetings also led to both Brecht and Kaprow attending John Cage's class at The New School for Social Research, New York, often driving down together from New Brunswick.

"The primary function of my art seems to be an expression of maximum meaning with a minimal image, that is, the achievement of an art of multiple implications, through simple, even austere, means. This is accomplished, it seems to me, by making use of all available conceptual and material resources. I conceive of the individual as part of an infinite space and time: in constant interaction with that continuum (nature), and giving order (physically or conceptually) to a part of the continuum with which he interacts." George Brecht in Project in Multiple Dimensions 1957-58, an essay co-authored with Bob Watts and Allan Kaprow^[9]

Brecht studied with John Cage at the New School for Social Research in 1958 and 1959, during which time he invented, and then refined, the Event Score ^[10] which would become a central feature of Fluxus. Typically, Event Scores are simple instructions to complete everyday tasks which can be performed publicly, privately, or not at all. These ideas would be taken up and expanded upon up by La Monte Young, Yoko Ono and many other avant-garde artists who passed through Cage's classes. ^[11]

He also wrote about Fluxus in The Fluxus Newspaper. Hannah Higgins, daughter of Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles, mentions and quotes Brecht several times in her landmark book about Fluxus, The Fluxus Experience (2002). Notable contributions to Fluxus from George Brecht include "Word Events", and Water Yam, the earliest and one of the most famous "Fluxkits". Brecht was associated with the Fluxus artists of the 1960s including, Daniel Spoerri, Dick Higgins, and others. He taught at Rutgers University and took part in many of the Fluxus and Happenings activities there, including Yam Festival. He worked with artists such as John Cage, Ray Johnson, Ken Friedman, Alison Knowles and Robert Filliou. One of his most cited works is 'Drip Event' (1962) - instructions for a performance/event (Event Score) involving 'a source of dripping water and an empty vessel.. arranged so that the water falls into the vessel' (January 1962).

He left New York in April 1965 for Rome; from there he moved to Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, to start a shop, La Cédrille Qui Sourait, with the french artist Robert Filliou, also a member of Fluxus. The shop was intended to explore ideas about the 'obtuse relationship(s) to the institution of language.'^[12] After the shop closed in 1968, Brecht moved to London where he organised the Book of the Tumbler on Fire exhibition, an ongoing series of assemblages representing 'pages' of a fictitious book, Cologne and Stuttgart, 1969. He continued to exhibit widely throughout the seventies and early eighties. Since then, his work has been included in a number of important retrospectives, including major shows about fluxus.

In 2006 he won the prestigious Berlin Art Prize. de:Berliner Kunstpreis

From 1972 Brecht lived in Cologne where he died in December 2008.

[edit] External links

• George Brecht at the-artists.org
• Dutch Biography of Brecht
• Practice George Brecht's Word Event
• George Brecht retrospective
• George Brecht Resources
• George Brecht + James Tenney with George Maciunas, Entrance... (excerpt) 1:46 published on the Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine
• New York Times obituary
• A good essay on Brecht by Anna Dezeuze
• A complete list of all Brecht's multiples

[edit] Notes