George Maciunas (1931-1978)
Maciunas was the obsessive organiser and publisher of Fluxus, the ‘chairman’. As a sideline, he was also the “Father of SoHo”, the main driver of the gentrifying the dilapidated loft buildings of the New York neighbourhood with artists’ cooperatives. In the process, others made fortunes but the communist Maciunas died penniless.
Two things he did before he died, young, of pancreatic cancer:
- visited the Cyclades in a quest to found an artists’ colony to be called ‘Fluxus Island’
- got married in a “Fluxwedding” in which bride and groom swapped clothing
