American conceptual artist / avant-garde composer / professional chemist
Key member of and influence on Fluxus, the international group of avant-garde artists centered around George Maciunas
One of the pioneers of participatory art / important precursor to conceptual art / art focuses attention on perceptual and cognitive experience of viewer.
Described his art as a way of ‘ensuring that the details of everyday life, the random constellations of objects that surround us, stop going unnoticed.’
Born George Ellis MacDiarmid and changed his name to Brecht as a soldier stationed in Germany in 1945, just because he liked the sound of it.
Studied chemistry at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy & Science
Married twice, one son
First influences: Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg / Marcel Duchamp is the embodiment of the ‘artist-researcher’ / experimental music of John Cage
John Cage and the New School for Social Research
Event Scores were the central feature of Fluxus. They were instructions to complete everyday tasks, which can be performed publicly, privately, or negatively. Started to mail small cards bearing the scores to various friends – ‘mail art.’ Became the basis for the build up to the Yam Festival organized by Robert Watts (Yam Festival was an alternative to the gallery system, producing art that could not be bought).
Taught at Rutgers University in an unusually progressive art department.
One of most famous pieces was “Drip Music” – “a source of water and an empty vessel are arranged so that the water falls into the vessel.”
1989 retired from Fluxus / reclusive
Lived in Rome, South of France, London, and Dusseldorf
Died at 82 in 2008 in Cologne, Germany
Example of work:
Drip Music
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