George Brecht

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George Brecht : biography

August 27, 1926 – December 5, 2008

In November 1969, Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra (see ) performed Realization of the Journey of the Isle of Wight Westwards by Iceberg to Tokyo Bay, a piece based on Brecht’s Translocations, in London. Other imagined moves included Cuba moving alongside Miami, and Iceland moving next to Spain.

Translating the Hsin-Hsin-Ming

As part of his lifelong interest in Zen Buddhism, Brecht began a focused study of the Chinese language with the aim of translating the ancient text the Hsin-Hsin-Ming by Seng Ts’an, c600 AD, in 1976. The book, published in 1980, included three autonomous translations; an English version by Brecht, a French one by Filliou and a German version by A Fabri. It also included calligraphy by Takako Saito.

Other works completed in this period include a series of Crystal Boxes, containing constantly transforming crystals; a performance and lecture ‘with slides, music and fireworks’ called The Chemistry of Music given at the ICA; The Brunch Museum, an exhibition dedicated to relics associated with the (fictional) character WE Brunch; a play entitled ‘Silent Music’ broadcast on West German Radio as part of celebrations for John Cage’s 75th birthday; and 3 large sculptures, called Void Stones, commissioned for the Skulptur Projekte Münster.

‘[The Chemistry of Music & The Brunch Museum are two of the] three projects that Brecht called “meta-creations”. The first, from 1968, is a slide-based lecture under the title The Chemistry of Music, which offers a critique of the lecture format as the predominating method of teaching. The second, The San Antonio Installation, is based on extracts from a popular series of French detective novels by the author San Antonio. The excerpts consist in an eccentric collection of articles (many of them found in French flea markets) which materialise details of the narrations and which present a kind of antidote against passive experience – in this case, the mechanical absorption of cheap literature. The third project is The Brunch Museum, an ingenious “exhibited object” of the life and work of W. E. Brunch, an imaginary figure of “great historical importance” invented by Brecht and the artist Stephen Kukowski. As in the case of the lecture model and novel, this project challenges institutionalised forms of representation and dissemination of information.’

Last years

Whilst his work continued to be included in a number of major group shows, by 1989 he would refer to himself as ‘retired from fluxus’. Becoming increasingly reclusive, he only allowed two retrospectives of his work in the last 30 years of his life; both were called ‘A Heterospective’ (loosely translated as a ‘Collection of Othernesses’). The second, a large museum exhibition that was shown in Cologne and Barcelona, 2005–06, opened with a simple sign marked ‘End’ and ended with another stating ‘Start’..

In 2006 he won the prestigious Berliner Kunstpreis. From late 1971 Brecht lived in Cologne, where he died, after a number of years of failing health, on 5 December 2008. His first marriage ended in 1963; he married for a second time, to Hertha Klang, in 2002. He lived with Donna Jo Brewer for a number of years between.

"John Cage seems to think that if he contacts the most people possible, they (or someone) will understand. I think, if someone understands, they will contact me (my work, the work). Leave the people alone." George Brecht c1977, quoted in A Heterospective, p8

Notes

Category:1926 births Category:2008 deaths Category:American chemists Category:American expatriates in Germany Category:American conceptual artists Category:American contemporary artists Category:Fluxus Category:American installation artists Category:Artists from New York

New York avant-garde

Flute Solo

In a frequently retold anecdote used to describe the origins of one of Brecht’s most personal Event Scores, the artist recalled an incident when his father had a ‘nervous breakdown ‘ during a rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra;