In 'A Flexible History of Fluxus: Facts and Fictions', the author's third volume of on the roots and fruits of 'the most radical art movement of the past half century', Emmett Williams turns cartoonist. His seventy colourful, pseudo-historical collage-drawings, digitally remastered by Ann Noel for this edition, are people with often-irreverent images of his real-life friends and colleagues. Williams, an octogenarian poet and the oldest living member of Fluxus, assumes the role of ringmaster in a three-ring circus limelighting the fanciful antics of the stars of Fluxus, Happenings, and Performance Art -- George Maciumas, John Cage, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Nam June Paik, Joseph Beuys, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Robert Filliou, Geoff Hendricks, Williams and Ann Noel themselves -- and dozens more.
The book may be irreverent, but the author stresses in his introduction that even in the most far-fetched pictures, 'there is an iota, a jot, or a tittle of truth' -- and there, on the left-hand pages, opposite each of the cartoons, are the fascinating documents from the author's personal archive relating some of the unlikely things that really happened in Performance Art 'showbiz' over the years.
