Fluxus was not really about art objects so much as it was about provocations.  The artists in the movement, which drew from theater, dada and conceptual art, were overturning centuries-old conventions about artmaking, and conventions about other things too.  And, in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, when they hit their stride, just about everything was being overturned.  So I was curious to see how the NYU’s Gray Art Gallery would mount their exhibit Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life.  As you’d expect, the works aren’t monumental.  There are a lot of texts (pamphlets, posters, stamps, postcards), a lot of found objects (bottles, boxes, timepieces, a white dress shirt), and a lot of small, personal, hand-crafted objects.

Most appealing are the Fluxkits, little boxes that provided all the pieces needed, as well as bare-bone instructions, to perform one proscribed Fluxus action.  They’re a riff on do-it-yourself art kits, and also the facility with which just about everything in our culture – even the most ephemeral ideas – can be packaged, marketed, and sold.  The exhibit includes Fluxkits called A Flux Corsage (a package of seeds), A Box of Smile (a mirror-lined pillbox), Sacramental Fluxkit (vials of holy water), and Zen for Film (an infinity loop of entirely clear 35mm film).  The finest one is A Flux Suicide Kit by Ben Vautier, which contains a razor blade, a rope, a shard of glass, and other potentially dangerous but largely innocuous household objects.  It’s funny, chilling and elegant.