WHO NEEDS HELVETICA ANYWAY:

How John Cage Could be seen as a founder in the Fluxus Movement

Samantha LaRoche
Poetic Off the Page
March, 24 2016
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It has often been written, that Dick Higgins was a key player in the founding of

the American Fluxus Movement. He was an art theorist who applied this ideas to real

scenarios to test their viability. Higgins took both his successes and failures in stride,

putting the up in exhibitions to learn and teach from his practices.1 One predecessor

and teacher of Dick higgins was John Cage. Cage was an American Composer, who

brought avant garde compositions into the creative world in the late 1940’s. After the

success of his piece ​

4’33”​
in 1952, Cage’s career as an avant garde composer began

to flourish.2 He was teaching at The New School in New York City when he mentored

Dick Higgins and a number of other students, most of whom were not trained

musicians. Many of these students, including Al Hansen, Dick Higgins and Jackson

Mac Low, were also associated with the New York Audio Visual Group at this time3 and

from the ideas coming out of each group, the Fluxus Movement would blossom. It was

truly Cage’s thoughts and ideas that the Fluxus Movement was built around. His

students learned to think as he did with the ideas of art as a sensory experience that

could allow for more than just viewing or listening.

The Fluxus Movement was a growth of avant garde ideas that would cross

artistic mediums, very much inspired by the work of artists like Marcel Duchamp and

1
Friedman, Ken. "Dick Higgins." U B U W E B :: Dick Higgins. Accessed March 11, 2016.
http://www.ubu.com/historical/higgins/index.html​ .
 
2
John Cage: About The Composer." PBS. August 01, 2001. Accessed March 13, 2016.
 "​
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/john-cage-about-the-composer/471/.
 
3
"About The Composer." PBS. 2001. Accessed March 11, 2016.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/john-cage-about-the-composer/471/.
 
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John Cage. It greatest growth period was in the late 1950’s to the early 1960’s during

and after Hansen, Higgins, and Mac Low had studied at The New School with Cage.

The writers at UbuWeb described Fluxus well when they stated:

Fluxus' interdisciplinary aesthetic brings together influences as diverse

as Zen, science, and daily life and puts them to poetic use. Initially

received as little more than an international network of pranksters, the

playful artists of Fluxus were, and remain, a network of radical

visionaries who sought to reconcile art with life.4

This particular quote really speaks to the every-man. It explains that Fluxus pieces

were meant to be fun. They did not have to be fully understood by everyone, in order to

be enjoyed by them. These artists were trying to explore the everyday world and point

out its absurdities and inadequacies, allowing themselves and their viewers to embrace

happenstance and accept what it is to be human. It was John Cage at The New School

who brought a lot of these ideas to the table when teaching his students about the

avant garde and different ways to perceive art through the senses.

John Cage was one of the most influential avant garde musicians of the 20th

century. It was his piece ​

4’33”​
that began the avant garde music movement in the

United States.5 It was with this piece, he suggested that a musical performance was

4
"Film & Video: Fluxfilm Anthology - 02: Dick Higgins - Invocation of Canyons and
Boulders (for Stan Brakhage) (1966)." U B U W E B - Film & Video: Fluxfilm Anthology - 02:
Dick Higgins - Invocation of Canyons and Boulders (for Stan Brakhage) (1966). Accessed
March 13, 2016. http://www.ubu.com/film/fluxfilm02_higgins.html.
 
5
"About The Composer." PBS. 2001. Accessed March 11, 2016.
 ​
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/john-cage-about-the-composer/471/.
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about listening. In this composition, it was directed that the performer walk on stage,

sit at their instrument, and simply listen until they deemed the piece to be finished, then

walk off stage. Cage began his career studying as a classical composer. It was while

studying at UCLA with Arthur Schoenberg that his work began to take an alternative

route. It was clear that he had become inspired by other artists, particularly Duchamp,

when his work opened up into these multifaceted performances that were less about

emotion and more about thoughts and ideas. In his later work, eastern teaching of Zen

I Ching.6​
and the predictions of the Chinese ​ The nature of the ​
​ I Ching​
, was that of

random composition. Cage could make these pieces without having a practiced hand

affect their final product. It w​

as written that, for Cage, “music was everywhere and

could be made from anything [he] brought a dynamic optimism to everything he did.”7

His work was full of ideas different from much that had been heard before and it could

be believed that it was those ideas that brought this students to him.

Being an art theorist, Dick Higgins was able to take the teachings of Cage and

of Duchamp and bring them into the new movement they were creating. The American

Fluxus Movement, began in New York when the teachings of John Cage were put into

effect by his student, Higgins and his colleagues. As the Fluxus Movement began to

grow, there was a lot more talk about their use of multiple mediums and the visceral

nature of the performances. It was this new dialogue that lead to Higgins’ creation of

6
"John Cage." Wikipedia. Accessed March 13, 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage.

7
"About The Composer." PBS. 2001. Accessed March 11, 2016.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/john-cage-about-the-composer/471/.
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the word “intermedia,” which was used to discuss ​

various inter-disciplinary art

activities that occurred between genres in the 1960’s.8 Higgins was a humble man

who lived a short but full life. In his 60 years, he managed to push the Fluxus

movement into fruition and start a publishing company for artists in the genre,

including himself. Something Else Press was a company founded by Higgins to give

Fluxus theories and ideas on a page. While a lot of Fluxus are was visual it was largely

about the theory or suggestion as well. A primary example of these theories lies in

Danger Music​
, a boy of work created by Higgins in 1962. With ​
Danger Music,​
Higgins

would write these scores or scripts that tell the performer to “Find it. Attack it.” or

“Not-smile for some days.” These pieces are a rounded sampling of what Fluxus art

was and how it made the viewer think. The generally vague nature of writings like this

gave a lot of room for interpretation giving the audience a art in the production of the

piece, as did much of Cage’s work.

While Dick higgins and his colleagues pushed for the movement to begin, John

Cage was the true inspiration for Fluxus. His avant garde ideas and ways of thinking

beyond the traditional ways of art gave a new lease on art theory and practice.

Traditionally, art is about emotion; with the Fluxus Movement, art began to be about

thinking. Though it is true that the Fluxus artists were a playful group, the work they

were creating questioned social constructs and sensory perception. Works like ​
4’33”

allowed for other new ideas to come forward and be put into practice. Work like that of

8
"Statement on Intermedia." Dick Higgins: Statement on Intermedia. Accessed March 15,

2016. http://www.artpool.hu/Fluxus/Higgins/intermedia2.html.

 
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Dick Higgins may not have been accepted had John Cage not paved the way for his

new theories to be put into play.

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"About The Composer." PBS. 2001. Accessed March 11, 2016.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/john-cage-about-the-composer/471/.

"Dick Higgins. Danger Music No. 28. 1963 | MoMA." The Museum of Modern

Art. Accessed March 13, 2016.

http://www.moma.org/collection/works/127394?locale=en.

"Dick Higgins." Wikipedia. Accessed March 13, 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Higgins.

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "John Cage." Encyclopedia Britannica

Online. Accessed March 11, 2016. http://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Cage.

"Film & Video: Fluxfilm Anthology - 02: Dick Higgins - Invocation of Canyons

and Boulders (for Stan Brakhage) (1966)." U B U W E B - Film & Video: Fluxfilm

Anthology - 02: Dick Higgins - Invocation of Canyons and Boulders (for Stan Brakhage)

(1966). Accessed March 13, 2016. http://www.ubu.com/film/fluxfilm02_higgins.html.

"Fluxus Movement, Artists and Major Works." The Art Story. Accessed March

15, 2016. http://www.theartstory.org/movement-fluxus.htm.

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Friedman, Ken. "Dick Higgins." U B U W E B :: Dick Higgins. Accessed March

11, 2016. http://www.ubu.com/historical/higgins/index.html.

"John Cage." Wikipedia. Accessed March 13, 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage.

"Statement on Intermedia." Dick Higgins: Statement on Intermedia. Accessed

March 15, 2016. http://www.artpool.hu/Fluxus/Higgins/intermedia2.html.