“But ugly, expensive things can be useful: they can impress people who do not understand us, do not share our taste, but with whom we might be in love, more than a difficult object which does not yield up its beauty at once. Now it is precisely and only those people who do not understand us whom it may be useful to impress with possessions, since our intelligence will be enough to win the regard of superior beings.”
(Proust, The Prisoner, trans. Carol Clark, p. 159)
One night I was sleeping in the basement of 80 Wooster Street. I think it was the late Fall of 1967. George comes in, says, “Come help. I got these trees here, I have to plant them.”
“What, at this hour of night?” I hate to get up at night. But I did, and yes, he had these shabby trees lying on the sidewalk.
“I stole them from the parking lot on West Broadway,” he told me proudly, laughing. “They were digging up the whole place, with tractors, and I asked them to give me a couple of the trees, and they said no! So I waited until the night, and I took them, you see? We have to plant them now, it’s against the law to plant trees in SoHo.
The next day, or a day later, some city officials showed up. “No trees are permitted here,” they told me. “You’ll have to get rid of them.”
I go down to the basement, to George. He was making his Fluxus boxes or something, and he says, “Tell them if they don’t like our trees they can pull them out.” So I go back to the city officials, and I say: “No, George is not going to do it. He says you have to do it. And he wants me to take some pictures when you do it.”
The city people looked at me, then at each other, turned around, and we never saw them again.
But the trees grew and prospered. Big, big trees they are now, happy trees, the only trees on Wooster Street.
(Jonas Mekas, letter to Emmett Williams, 1993, in Mr. Fluxus: a collective portrait of George Maciunas 1931–1978)
Marcel Duchamp’s cover for André Breton’s Young Cherry Trees Secured Against Hares (1946):
The cover of the first American edition of Michel Butor’s Mobile (1963), designed by Janet Halverson:
(I would have a better image of that, but there doesn’t seem to be one on the Internet and thieves stole the scanner cable, so the phone & Photoshop will have to do. Alas.)
One would imagine that someone would have similarly made a splendid cover for Kafka’s Amerika of the Statue of Liberty holding a sword aloft, but the closest one I can find is the New Directions cover by Gilda Kuhlman:
But the best cover for Amerika that I could find is the poster for this French theatrical version of the novel, which captures more of the novel’s spirit:
I’ve never worked for a living. I consider working for a living slightly imbecilic from an economic point of view. I hope that some day we’ll be able to live without being obliged to work.
(Marcel Duchamp, interview with Pierre Cabanne, 1966)
In answer to your question – Fluxus way of life is 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. doing socially constructive and useful work – earning your own living, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. spending time on propagandizing your way of life among other idle artists & art collectors and fighting them, 12 p.m. to 8 a.m. sleeping (8 hours is enough).
(George Maciunas, letter to Tomas Schmit, January 1964)
Voila, the Locus Solus Industries cafépress store. Go buy things. Or rather, go buy the one thing that’s there, this fine t-shirt:
Suitable, I am sure, for many occasions.
(also)
Marcel Duchamp’s Apolinère Enameled, 1916–1917
Rhonda Roland Sherer’s “Marcel Duchamp’s Impossible Bed and Other ‘Not’ Readymade Objects: A Possible Route of Influence From Art To Science”
With the end you are tired of this old world Shepherdess ô Eiffel Tower the herd of the bridges bleats this morning You have enough of it to live in Greek and Roman antiquity Here even the cars seem to be old The religion alone remained very new the religion Remained simple like the hangars of Port-Aviation Only in Europe you are not ancient ô Christianisme European most modern it is you Black and white Pape X And you that the windows observe shame retains you To enter daN a church and of you to confess this morning to it You read the leaflets the catalogues the posters which sing high Here is poetry this morning and for prose there are the newspapers There are the deliveries with 25 centimes full with adventure police Portraits of the great men and thousand titles various I saw this morning a pretty street of which I forgot the name New and clean of the sun it was the bugle Directors workmen and beautiful shorthand typists Monday morning at Saturday evening four times per day pass there The morning by three times the siren groans there A rageuse bell barks there about midday Inscriptions of the signs and the walls The plates the opinions the made-to-order of the parrots criaillent I like the grace of this industrial street Located in Paris enters the street Aumont-Thieville and the avenue of the Terns
(Google translation of the start of Guillaume Apollinaire’s “Zone”, from here, complete in French here, and an anonymous translation – not that of LeRoy C. Breunig, Donald Revell, or Samuel Beckett –into English here.)
(Perhaps related: bpNichol’s Translating Translating Apollinaire.)