George Brecht - New York Avant-garde - Other Works

Other Works

Whilst the pieces he made for the Fluxus cooperative remain his most famous works, he continued to exhibit artworks within more traditional gallery spaces throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Many of these works played with the notion of the Readymade, attempting to retain the pieces' functionality. Chairs feature in a lot of these works; the earliest was Three Chair Events exhibited at the Martha Jackson Gallery, NY, 1961.

Three Chair Events

• Sitting on a black chair. Occurrence.
• Yellow Chair. (Occurrence.)
• On (or near) a white chair. Occurrence,

Spring 1961

For the exhibition, the white chair was spot-lit in the middle of the gallery with a stack of Three Chair Events scores placed nearby on a window sill. The black chair was placed in the bathroom, whilst the yellow chair was placed outside on the street, and was being sat on by Claes Oldenburg's mother - deep in conversation - when Brecht arrived for the private view. A later piece, Chair With A History, 1966, part of a series Brecht worked on in Rome, featured a chair with a red book placed on it inviting the occupier to add 'whatever was happening' as part of an ongoing record of the chair's history (see ). Other series of works included signs - often readymade - with simple statements on, such as 'Exit' or 'Notice Green' embossed in a red sign next to 'Notice Red' embossed on a green one (see ).

Brecht started a series called The Book of the Tumbler on Fire in 1964, and exhibited the first 56 at the Fischback Gallery NY in early 1965, shortly before leaving the US. The pieces consisted of framed collages, made of cotton-filled specimen boxes, designed to show "the continuity of unlike things." Brecht would pursue this series for over a decade, with each piece being referred to as a 'page'.