Oh Fluxus, you bring out the best (or worst) of me

“A Child’s History of Fluxus” gave me a lot to think about.  I’m going to start this reading response with a small philosophical thought (oh, me and my philosophy these days): We spend so much time searching that we forget to cherish the beauty of things around us.  I think Fluxus surrounds that thought.  It’s about taking the simplest things and making art out of it.  That’s probably why Higgins and the rest of the Fluxus artists kept refusing to use “fancy” things in their work.  A majority of the piece definitely sounded a bit “anti-fancy”.

It sparked my interests when the Fluxus people didn’t accept invitations from “fancy” museums and colleges.  It reminded me of various artists (a lot of talented youtube artists) who don’t get signed into labels.  Speaking of which, many game designers also refuse to work for companies because they fear they would lose their freedom.  I have so much respect for these people because they are not creating art to earn money; they make art for the sake of art – for their love of art.  Personally, I don’t know if I have the courage to do so.

Another idea I really loved about Fluxus people (sort of connects with something I said earlier) is that they are unwilling to have their art become too famous because the whole idea of Fluxus is its simplicity.  It reminded me of many modern day artists, movies, writers, and singers.  A lot of artists these days are making sequels to previous successful work just because “the first one was successful”.  (We wonder why sequels are not as good as the first season)  It’s all about the money again!  Musicians and writers aren’t writing for the sole purpose of expressing themselves – when they become famous it eats at their heart and they soon start creating their art FOR the viewers, FOR the fame, FOR the money, and the thing that made their initial piece beautiful gets swallowed by it all.

Lastly, I wanted to mention how when Fluxus wasn’t accepted when it first came out, it reminded me of a project I did last semester.  The project expressed that many new innovative arts are not accepted by society because society has a very narrow mind (stupid mind) of beauty.  For instance, Van Gogh’s paintings were highly criticized in the past, but now his pieces are seen as one of the most influential artworks!

Okay, I lied, one more thing!  Fluxus makes me so happy because it connected people from various countries and showed how different people have similar ideas.  It makes me love people again haha.