Amazingly, Fluxus managed to put into practice what so many artists—whether individual, collective or institutionalized—continue to harp on, though mainly in theory: a program of exemplary openness, versatility and continual surprise. Spearheaded by the suitably charismatic George Maciunas, this was a (very) loose consortium of creative oddballs which included painters, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers, poets, musicians, dancers and even the occasional designer, all of whom had agreed to periodically forsake some of their autonomy in order to join together in fluid, collaborative ensembles, to disband and recombine at the drop of a hat, and to explore to the fullest the possibilities that different configurations afford. Variety was Fluxus’ operational principle; variety of medium and technique complemented by that of the membership, which was evenly, yet unsystematically, distributed across still daunting divides of gender, race, nationality. Even the present enthusiasm for P.C. multi-media product cannot begin to approach the sheer breadth and range of these interdisciplinary endeavors.
This being so, it should come as no surprise that the numerous catalogs and publications which have emerged around Fluxus are likewise varied in the particular focus of their essays and documentation. This book happens to be a very good one—including a surprisingly moving account of the short, weird life of the late Maciunas; a more than adequate selection of the various posters, handbills and other printed ephemera which showcase a graphic sensibility that grows more elegant with each passing year; and a bunch of photographs of a bunch of objects and performances that together define just what it is that has all been done before. JT

Publisher: Thames and Hudson
Paperback: 142 pages
Illustrated

“The book examines a wide array of British horror films and the stories behind them, from the early melodramas of Tod Slaughter right through to Hammer and their rivals Tigon and Amicus, plus mavericks like Michael Reeves, sex/horror director Peter Walker and more recent talents such as Clive Barker, director of Hellraiser. Films featured range in scope from the sadism of Peeping Tom to the mutant SF of A Clockwork Orange.”

Publisher: Creation
Paperback: 283 pages
Illustrated

Suspended in immaculate resin fields, Tomaselli’s chosen materials—a pharmacopoeia including everything from Percodan to Sudafed, hemp leaves to blotter acid—become planets, cells, stitches, landscapes, hypnotic patterns. Time and space warp, and patterns of saturated colors swirl, shimmer, vibrate and fly by like squadrons of alien crafts which flash in one’s peripheral vision. The implications of the drugs and their contexts dovetail and jam, multiply and complicate each image’s multilayered meanings and affects. The sublime beauty of these compositions dispenses a blast of psychic pleasure, strangely flavored by a mournful sense of the spirituality we long for in everyday life.
Like drugs, these works demand nothing of the viewer, and generously deliver the unexpected. This is not to say they exist outside of art history, and Alisa Tager’s excellent essay explores influences and inferences involving movements from Constructivism to Conceptualism. Both Tager and David A. Greene met the challenge of soberly discussing this gloriously experiential work (with the possible exception of Greene’s Grateful Dead concert acid trip reverie), and the color reproductions in this small gem of a catalog are very good. MH

Publisher: Smart Art
Paperback: 37 pages
Illustrated

“From the animal grace of Bruce Lee through the brutal flailing of Sonny Chiba to the wooden precision of Chuck Norris, martial arts movies are ridiculed or ignored by everyone save the millions who love them. The very same people who gasp in wonder at the Peking Opera deride kung fu movies without realizing that the finest ones are marvelous combinations of opera and ballet… The historic grandeur, the melodramatic emotions and the impressive choreography only serve to point up the martial movies’ action. That’s what we really love. These are great action movies.”

Publisher: Citadel
Paperback: 255 pages
Illustrated

“Certainly to disembody human beings into shadowgraphs of my concepts of them is no labor of love. To enclose them in an ever-shifting frame imperceptible to them, to persuade or compel them to conceal their bewilderment, to force them to walk the chalk line of a vision alien to many who move in front of a camera, is not conducive to ‘creative ecstasy’… Engraved on a surface more sensitive than any other known material are thoughts that have been absorbed by large masses never before exposed to such a vigorous agent. But what went into my films and what came out was not always the same.”

Publisher: Mercury House
Paperback: 352 pages
Illustrated

“The famous Düsseldorf photographers’ formal investigation of industrial structures displays their serenely cool, rigorous approach to the structures they photograph as variations on an ideal form. The Bechers make no attempt to analyze or explain their subjects. For more than 35 years, the Bechers have been creating a monument to the most venerable buildings of the industrial era through their photographic art. They have re-awoken the forgotten or unnoticed beauty of water towers, gas holders, lime kilns and blast furnaces, and their photographs have told the story of the process of industrialization. Their head-on, deadpan photographs express an almost Egyptial sense of man’s heroic effort to put his mark on the landscape. Gas Tanks presents four principally different forms of gas holders or gas tanks taken over three decades.”

Publisher: MIT
Hardback: 144 pages

Photographic master of the beauty of the grotesque. With the lush, timeless feeling of daguerrotypes, Witkin photographs transform the “shocking” into sensual tableaux: a severed head on a plate, Siamese twins joined at the head, hermaphroditic Venuses, a dead-meat cornucopia, a man on a bed of nails… all interspersed with visual references to classic art pieces and Christian iconography.

Publisher: Twin Palms
Hardback: 124 pages
Illustrated

“One of the supreme artists of the 18th and 19th centuries, Goya produced an enormous body of paintings, drawings and engravings. His drawings especially demonstrate the vast range of the artist’s subject matter and technique, and include all of Goya’s best-known thematic material: portraits, scenes of fantasy and horror, bullfighting, witchcraft, the sorrows of war, social satire, prisons and executions, liberalism and anticlericalism.”

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 48 pages
Illustrated

Speak loudly in the swinging cafés, pepper your repartee with words from this book and save the $50,000 it would have cost to attend that stuffy film school. Grammar’s purpose is to present narrative techniques for film in a practical way, instruction on the proper organization of images for their presentation onscreen. This includes motion, dialogue, punctuation, camera movement and editing editing editing. While it is the only resource of its kind and is infinitely useful to the budding auteur, the author stresses that only when the celluloid is “running through your fingers” will you be near the completion of your education in film. SK

Publisher: Silman-James
Paperback: 624 pages
Illustrated

The art of German apocalyptic painter George Grosz. Grosz was a young soldier during World War I but was kicked out without ever having been to the front. After the Russian Revolution he joined the artist’s association November Group, which formed in Berlin in 1918, and co-founded the German faction of the Dada movement. Grosz was a biting political satirist, and his most poignant works, produced throughout the ‘20s, skillfully presented acerbic commentaries on the decadent elite and the ravaging political war machine. Grosz’s cartoons, paintings and drawings (this book includes over 70 illustrations, half of those in full color) demonstrates that scenes from the aftermath of World War I—poverty, corruption, filth and debauchery—are just as likely to be scenes from today. MDH

Publisher: Taschen
Paperback: 96 pages
Illustrated