George Brecht
Halfway,Oregon 1925
lives in Cologne

Scrubble, o.J./n.d.
Object-box, scrabble, spool of thread,
36 x 50 x 6 cm

The motto of the Fluxus movement was to link art and life, whereby the role of mediator between reality and idea, association and poetry is allocated to the "ready made". Subscribing to this way of thinking Brecht sees himself as a "researcher-artist" and attempts to link art and science. He therefore speaks of "Grenzlinienkunst"
(art on the boundaries) which not only transcends the genres of art, music, performance and poetry but also goes far beyond the boundaries of art itself. Brecht draws inspiration from the natural and linguistic sciences, from philosophy and particularly oriental philosophy in order to get to know other ways of thinking. He designs his artistic ideas among other things with "event scores" conceived on the principle of "unspecified" music scores. According to Gabriele Knapstein the term serves " to designate an open structure which permits "events in all dimensions (or outside of dimensions (Brecht)). Nature is for Brecht the book of books. As an analogy to this he has since 1964 been developing a work which is evolving into many chapters "The Book of the Tumbler on Fire". In the beginning there were chests and boxes the contents of which (various objets trouvés) he called "exhibits" and which were sometimes ironically combined with typographical plays on words. S. D. Sauerbier captures the essence of Brecht's work when he writes in this context: "Signs are not things but relationships and references; the meaning of signs (…) and the meaning of objects (…) are two different things." In this sense Brecht reworked maps, postcards, playing cards, plates from books, clothes stands and chairs.

G. K.

Literature:
Henry Martin, An Introduction to George Brecht´s Book of The Tumbler on Fire, Bologna 1978.
H.D. Sauerbier, George Brecht, in: Künstler, Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst, München 1988.
Gabriele Knapstein, George Brecht: Event, Berlin 199