The artistic – or rather anti-artistic – movement Fluxus (from the Latin stream, current) originated in the 1960s and connected America with Western Europe, Japan and, over time, Eastern Europe. It referred to the Dadaist and forerunner of conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp, or the experimenter John Cage. Zen Buddhism was also close.
Members of the movement rejected “classical” art and “classical” exhibition space. They distanced themselves from paintings, sculptures, but also music created for the middle and upper class (in the West) or subordinate to the official socialist mantinels (in the East).
Fluxus prioritizes happenings and experiments with various media and artistic disciplines, not only visuals, but also music and poetry. He also developed the so-called “mail art”, in which artists sent each other – by post, later also on the Internet – various collages of recycled and found objects, poetry or postcards with stamps that they created.
Milan Knížák found his way to the movement in the 1960s, he was appointed “director of Fluxus East”, ie “director of Flux in the East”. He even came to the United States in 1968 at the invitation of Flux founder George Maciunas.
At that time, he was mainly interested in ceremonies and rituals, and the American audience also tried to involve them. “For example, a strange ritual where several people were locked in one room. Twenty-four hours without any communication, without sleep, without food, “he described one of his artistic interventions.
Yoko Ono and 45 artists
–
Works created by members of Flux were often unsaleable and fleeting, but some paradoxically remained preserved. The largest collections are managed by the New York MoMA and the Stuttgart State Gallery. “Mine is interesting in that there are a little more personal things in it. I received them directly from the authors as a gift or someone made them directly for me, “notes Milan Knížák about the collection he was building with his wife Maria.
It contains about seven hundred items from forty-six artists. Especially multiples (works of art produced in larger quantities), objects, drawings, but also photographs, films documenting various performances, author’s books and correspondence.
The authors represented often devoted themselves to the fine arts as well as music: conceptualist and avant-garde composer George Brecht, French action artist Robert Filliou, English composer and poet Dick Higgins, American visual artist Alison Knowles or her compatriot Ben Patterson. The most famous name, at least for the general public, is the artist, musician and wife of John Lennon Yoko Ono.
“The Knížák couple’s collection is a collection of direct participants in the Fluxus movement, which is the essential thing that gives it uniqueness, not only in the context of Europe, but perhaps the whole world,” believes Štefan Tóth from Kunsthalle Prague, who bought the collection. A new multifunctional space for art and culture should open in February of next year in the building of the former transformer station in Klárov, Prague.
He bit the guest, but now he adorns the church
Much earlier, it is possible to see the stained glass windows that Milan Knížák and Milan Perič designed for the Church of St. Luke in Svárov. Now they are made in the Prague artistic glassworks, which also worked for the St. Vitus Cathedral.
Stained glass windows by Milan Perič depict evangelists. Milan Knížák submitted designs by St. John, Roch, Václav and Šebestián. He himself says that he is not a member of the church personally. He came out of it at the age of eighteen by committing a grave sin – without confession he chewed on the guest. But he admits that he is a believer and is still seeking God.
“I want to look for a personal path to something I don’t understand. And in my opinion, God is what we can’t understand, what is somewhere, what we know or suspect exists somewhere, but we can’t deal with it in any way, “he explains.
The new stained glass windows will be ceremoniously presented to the public on September 28, the day of St. Wenceslas Day.
–
Underground artist, controversial director
However, the decoration of the church windows is not exactly what Milan Knížák would be most famous for. At the turn of the sixties and eighties, he became a key figure in the Aktual group. He promoted new forms of art underground, especially action. This had in common with the Fluxus movement. He composed and sang the songs I Love You and Lenin or the Children of Bolshevism, and as an instrument he used, for example, a started motorbike or a drill, which he calmly began to destroy the stage during the concert.
After the change of regime, the radical musician and non-conformist artist became the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts, where, among other things, he founded and ran a studio of intermedia creation. For example, Krištof Kintera or Jakub Špaňhel studied with him.
However, his name is mainly associated with one era of the National Gallery. He headed the leading Czech gallery institution for more than ten years and, as a controversial figure, had his opponents here as well. Probably the most explicit disagreement with Knížák’s leadership was expressed in 2004 by five artists who spun near one of his works.
– .
