During the final stages of An Anthology’s design and assembly, George Maciunas corresponded with Jackson Mac Low and La Monte Young from Wiesbaden, West Germany, where he worked as a graphic designer for the U.S. military. In a series of letters written between late 1961 and early 1963, we see Maciunas offering multiple design ideas for An Anthology’s cover and binding, including several that would deliberately create a difficult reading experience, and pleading for copies to be sent to him for distribution in Europe. (Mac Low and Young ultimately chose a conventional perfect-bound paperback format whose cover features the book’s title repeated tightly in black against a vibrant red background.) These letters also show that Maciunas was already busy collecting materials for a new series of anthologies that would be published under the name of Fluxus and include many of the same artists brought together in An Anthology.
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Title | Letter from George Maciunas to Jackson Mac Low on An Anthology of Chance Operations |
Maker | George Maciunas (Lithuanian American, 1931–78) |
Date | 13 May 1962 |
Type | correspondence |
Location | UC San Diego Special Collections and Archives, Jackson Mac Low Papers, MSS 180 |
Cite
Maciunas, George. Letter from George Maciunas to
Jackson Mac Low on
An Anthology of Chance Operations, 13 May
1962. UC San Diego Special Collections and Archives,
Jackson Mac Low Papers, MSS 180. In
The Scores Project: Experimental Notation in Music,
Art, Poetry, and Dance, 1950–1975, ed. Michael Gallope, Natilee Harren, and John
Hicks. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2025.
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