William Allen Word & Image

Venus de Milo apron, 1973.

760 x 410mm. Screen printed on fabric-backed vinyl with metal grommets. Edition of 1000. Unsigned. This apron is of 1000 examples in an edition planned for the unrealised third Flux Year Box. It was never unwrapped by the recipient in the 1970s, indicating that it was sent by George Maciunas to clients without ties.

£1400

A collection of 18 fluxus monogram cards, undated.

Each approx. 60 x 65mm. Each card printed recto only, all black on white card stock apart from on printed black on orange stock. Provenance: Archive of European Mail Art House run by Willem de Ridder which closed in 1964. These cards, designed by Maciunas, were used in various publications such as Fluxus 1. The monogram cards in this collection are: Ben Vautier, Dieter Rot, Stanley Brown [Stanley Brouwn], La Monte Young, Emmett Williams, Jonas Mekas, Tomas Schmit, Gyorgy Ligety, Joe Jones, Ben Patterson, Sylvano Bussotti, Yasunao Tone, Dick Higgins, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Alison Knowles, Takehisa Kosugi and Gustav Metzger. It is perhaps suprising to see the auto destructive artist Gustav Metzger monogram card made by Maciunas. According to the curator Mathieu Copeland, Maciunas and Metzger corresponded in the late 50s/early 60s before Metzger distanced himself from the Fluxus artistdue to differences in ideologies. Occasionally, de Ridder glued the monogram cards together in a concertina (a concertina of 11 such cards was also part of the Amsterdam Fluxus bookshop archive). 

£1100

Fluxpost (Aging Men), Fluxus, New York, 1975. 278 x 215mm. Offset lithography on gummed and perforated paper. This was the first set of 42 Fluxpost stamps to be designed by Maciunas, held in the collection of MoMA and Whitney.

The source imagery was described in Barbara Moore’s October 1982 Artforum piece entitled ‘George Maciunas: A Finger in Fluxus’ as a group photograph of the October 1905 159th annual meeting of members of the Eastern Synod at John’s Reformed Church, Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Maciunas ordered the images by each pictured person’s age and progressive growth of facial hair.

£725