Exhibition in Milan: The Museo del Novecento looks at Fluxus
![The entrance to the exhibition, difficult to find.](https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/C-oZ2Xj1KDK8K8-RdOlJl2.jpg?op=ocroped&val=1200,1200,1000,1000,0,0&sum=-sXJVTuDFFk)
The entrance to the exhibition, difficult to find.
Novecento Museum, Milan 2022.
This is the new exhibition of the Museo del Novecento in Milan, next to the Duomo. However, it is not seen on the great organs, like the retrospective devoted to the architect and designer Aldo Rossi which I recently told you about. The demonstration organized around Fluxus is content outside the building with a small orange banner. Inside, nothing at all in the vast hall. You have to access the rooms concerned by asking the way to a guard then to another, as if it were a treasure hunt. The thing is on the fourth floor, where there is a fork. While the historical route continues in the Mussolinian marble pylon up to the roof, draining the public to it, a footbridge leads the very few other visitors to a side building. It’s there, in an unheated place usually taking the place (at least in part) of a library. No one will come to disturb you, except a bundled guard. During my hour of travel, I remained alone.
Publishers
It must be said that nothing is first done to guide the amateur who does not know Fluxus on the tips of his frozen little fingers. It is halfway that a panel, also orange, will teach him not what he should know about this great international movement born in the 1950s (and of which there are traces even in the current creation), but the accessory. The visitor will learn above all that the hanging set up by Patrizio Peterlini and Martina Cognati materializes on the Italian aspect of the thing. Fluxus had a big echo in La Botte as early as 1962 (year of the big festival organized in Wiesbaden). There were a number of publishers there to disseminate the thought and objects designed in the form of multiples. All these people were not located in big cities known for their openness to the contemporary, like Milan and especially Turin. I thus discovered a publisher from Pescara, who suddenly lived far from everything.
![“Sottovuoto” by Philip Corner.](https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/DyiHjGW-aIoBBnMZ5lGDga.jpg?op=ocroped&val=1200,1200,1000,1000,0,0&sum=u5wXk1UvNIM)
“Sottovuoto” by Philip Corner.
Philip Corner, Novecento Museum, Milan 2022.
The thing should ultimately not surprise. The very word “Fluxus” indicates a flow of ideas destined to diffuse. Born at the end of the 1950s, this current which developed simultaneously in the United States, Europe and Japan was intended to be an aesthetic and social revolution. If these two goals do not develop in this anything original, that of mixing everything had not been seen since futurism. It was a question of uniting the visual, performative and sound arts. Separations were to be abolished, hence the organization of festivals, happenings and concerts. L’Ecart genevois of John M. Armleder, Claude Rychner and Partick Lucchini, founded in 1969, could therefore be linked to it. I should have well imagined the current Milan exhibition, better done and better staged, at Mamco, which keeps the huge archives of Ecart. It is therefore not surprising that Italy took part in such a broad movement, even though the very different notion of “arte povera” was also developing there.
![Fluxus box by George Maciunas.](https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/2gXr0Fx8K2QAXM5-xJjSwm.jpg?op=ocroped&val=1200,1200,1000,1000,0,0&sum=Uxxy5BH7viE)
Fluxus box by George Maciunas.
Estate of George Maciunas, Museo del Novecento, Milan 2022.
In many display cases describing manifestos, pamphlets and objects. Some of these have been made in only a few copies, for “luxury fluxers”. Others, poorer or simply more modest, were printed by the hundreds, the exact number of copies often remaining unknown. Many come with some sort of user manual. The audiovisual part is important. That of writing too. It must be said that Fluxus is somewhere the heir of older movements such as lettrism, concrete poetry or visual poetry. The whole proposed here forms a sort of enormous documentation. All of the hundreds of pieces shown come from the rest of the archives of the Fondazione Luigi Bonotto, named after a contemporary art entrepreneur who collected some 20,000 pieces at the time. Well organized and well managed, the latter serves today as a point of reference. You have a problem ? Type www.fondazionebonotto.org!
![The exhibit even includes t-shirts](https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/Cs6JC-Asq3V9O5bOyGl_gO.png?op=ocroped&val=1200,1200,1000,1000,0,0&sum=PDvtV29AdcM)
The exhibit even includes t-shirts
George Brecht, Novecento Museum, Milan 2022.
But who are the creators exposed? They are too numerous to all be named. Some are well known. They range from Swiss-bound Dieter Roth, New York Japanese Yoko Ono to German activist Joseph Beuys. I could also cite George Brecht, Philip Corner, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Allan Kaprow or Giuseppe Chiari. The most important figure, however, remains the unifying figure of George Maciunas. Born in 1931, this Latvian (in fact his first name was Jurgis) had fled with his family before the Soviets in 1944. The family had settled in Germany, then in the USA, the father having found work in an American company. Young, George Maciunas will be a designer for Knoll furniture. After having co-founded and hosted Fluxus, the man returned to Germany, setting up a number of festivals, including, historically, Wiesbaden in 1962. His life was always going to remain financially difficult. He died of cancer in 1978, leaving behind him a big void that was difficult to fill. I tell you here everything that the Milanese exhibition fails to specify…
In these unfortunate conditions (didactic poverty, invisibility, discomfort…) the exhibition is neither done nor to be done. The worst case ever. It seems to me permissible to regret it. Sixty-one after the irruption of Fluxus in Europe, the movement deserves to be shown with the historical importance that it supposes. It is a question of making it overflow from the small circle of initiates. Especially in Italy, where the weight of contemporary art remains very low compared to France, England and the Germanic countries. You just have to make people want to see and understand. Here, it’s missed, but the opportunity should not be neglected by international amateurs. Let them move. There are many things to discover in the coming months at the Museo del Novecento.
Convenient
“Fluxus, Arte per tutti”, Museo del Nocentento, 8, piazza Duomo, Milan, until April 16, 2023. Tel. 0039 02 88 44 40 61, website www.museodelnovecento.org Open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., Thursday until 10:30 p.m.
![There were even Fluxus bottles!](https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/1EuKNTaAKf2BsJ3LnJjsSN.jpg?op=ocroped&val=1200,1200,1000,1000,0,0&sum=tdSBwKJ7igA)
There were even Fluxus bottles!
Novecento Museum, Milan 2022.
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– The Museo del Novecento takes a look at Fluxus
Born around 1960, the movement has affected the USA, Europe and Japan until today. The institution shows above all the Italian contribution, but…