George Maciunas

George Maciunas (English: ; Lithuanian: Jurgis Mačiūnas; November 8, 1931 – May 9, 1978) was a Lithuanian American artist, born in Kaunas. A founding member and the central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers, he is most famous for organizing and performing early happenings and for assembling a series of highly influential artists' multiples.

Once he turned 18, George Maciunas took advantage of all that America's higher education system had to offer. First he studied Art, Graphic Design and Architecture at Cooper Union, then Architecture and Musicology at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and finally History of Art at the NYU Institute of Fine Arts, focusing on European and Siberian art of the mass migration period.

He became engrossed in a large array of subjects, including architecture, performance art, literature, sculpture, graphics, and music, and was information-hungry, absorbing material and processing it in his own original way. This often manifested itself in his creation of hugely expansive notes and charts, beautifully presented using his training in graphic design, which attempted complex, overlapping explorations of different artistic, cultural, and historical themes. These charts were never truly completed; even those he began during his university years he continuously added to over the next decades.

Through his studies Maciunas developed the view that learning should be an all-encompassing, immersive experience. He saw Western education as too specialized and narrow-minded, particularly in the way it taught art and art history. For Maciunas, 'Art', like education, should be a state of mind and being rather than a set of self-contained processes or materials separate to the self and day-to-day life. He was particularly influenced by his studies of the Dadaists in this respect. By the time Maciunas had completed his 11 years of higher education it was 1960 and he was 29 years old. He was ready to apply his mercurial philosophies concerning the nature of art and education to the real world.

With renewed interest in Fluxus, it is clear to see how Maciunas's collective has influenced artists in the decades since. Washington Post art critic Sebastian Smee writes that "[i]t's detectable in the bombast-puncturing gestures of artists like Gabriel Orozco and Francis Alÿs; in the politicized prodding of Ai Weiwei; in the god-, sex-, and death-baiting provocations of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin; in the philosophical restlessness of Olafur Eliasson..." The rise of the internet enabled a vibrant post-Fluxus community to develop online, notably through the website Fluxlist, and through digital multi-media art projects such as OtherMind's 2011 performance at the SOMArts building to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fluxus.

Finally, Maciunas's legacy is felt through his role as 'the father of SoHo', who helped to give the district its trendy image and influenced the fashionable reuse of warehouse spaces worldwide.