Dick Higgins

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Dick Higgins , real name Richard Carter Higgins (born March 15, 1938 in Cambridge , England , † October 25, 1998 in Québec , Québec , Canada ) was a composer , playwright , Fluxus artist, author and publisher .

Life

Higgins was born in England and grew up in various states on the east coast of the United States of America. In New York he studied at Columbia University and with Henry Cowell and John Cage at the New School for Social Research (1958/59). After graduating from Columbia with a BS , he studied offset printing and typography at the Manhattan School of Printing (graduated in 1961).

In John Cage's composition class he met Al Hansen , George Brecht and Richard Maxfield , who took over Cage's class after he left, and later Allan Kaprow . Since 1958, plays and musical events have been staged in New York. With Al Hansen he founded the Audio Visual Group . His film The Flaming City was shown for the first time in 1962 . In 1964, Higgins founded Something Else Press . In 1966 he organized the first exhibition of Concrete Poetry in New York.

Higgins married the artist Alison Knowles in 1960 . In the autumn of 1962, the couple took part in the Fluxus Festival in Wiesbaden , organized by George Maciunas , and in the events in Copenhagen , Paris and Düsseldorf .

One focus of the Something Else program was Fluxus, with George Brecht, Robert Filliou, Al Hansen, Dick Higgins himself, Alison Knowles, Diter Rot , Daniel Spoerri , Wolf Vostell , Emmett Williams and others. Higgins published books by Marshall McLuhan , Henry Cowell's New Musical Resources from 1930, the notations by John Cage, Merce Cunninghams Changes , Allen Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg and Paper Snake by mail artist Ray Johnson and Gertrude Steins The Making in his publishing house, which existed until 1973 of Americans and other of their books. There were translations ( Eugen Gomringer ) and collections of concrete poetry, British typewriter poetry and, edited by Richard Kostelanetz , Breakthrough Fictioneers .

The daughter Hannah Higgins (born 1964) is an art historian and wrote the standard work Fluxus Experience (2002). Her twin sister Jessica Higgins is a New York performance and intermedia artist. She worked closely with the curator Lance Fung, the Fluxus gallerist Emily Harvey, the museum of the artist ( The Artist's Museum ) and Construction in Process together.

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Dick Higgins has written and edited over forty books and brochures: his plays, happenings, Fluxus notes, compositions, poems, essays, autobiographical prose ( Amigo ) and studies on the history of the character poem .

In the Giordano Bruno tract On the Composition of Images, Signs and Ideas , an art of memory , which he commented on in detail , Higgins found confirmation of his concept early on. For this he coined the term intermedia :

"Basically, we can call such works Fluxus that are intermedial in their nature: visual poetry and poetic images, action music and musical action, and also happenings and events, provided that they are conceptually obliged to music, literature and visual arts."

Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles, in collaboration with the composer James Tenney, took an early interest in the possibilities of the computer, and Higgins' aleatoric text A Book About War & Love & Death in its most extensive version from 1972 was partially generated by a program.

Some of his works are exhibited in the museum FLUXUS + in Potsdam.

Publications

  • What are legends; A clarification. Bern Porter Books, Calais, ME [Maine], 1960. With Bern Porter (illustrator).
  • Jefferson's Birthday / Postface , Something Else Press, New York, 1964 ( Postface reports Fluxus, Jefferson's Birthday compiles Higgins' artistic activities for the year from Jefferson's birthday on April 13, 1962 to the next year).
    • See Postface , in: Jürgen Becker, Wolf Vostell (ed.): Happenings , Rowohlt, Reinbek, 1965.
  • A Book About Love & War & Death. Canto 1 , Something Else Press, A Great Bear Pamphlet , New York, 1965.
  • Intermedia . In: Something Else Newsletter , Volume 1, Number 1, 1966.
  • foew & ombwhnw: a grammar of the mind and a phenomenology of love and a science of the arts as seen by a stalker of the wild mushrooms , Something Else Press, New York, 1969.
  • Towards the 1970's , Abyss Publications, Somerville, MA, 1969.
  • Fantastic Architecture , With Wolf Vostell (Ed.), Something Else Press, New York, 1969.
    • Extended translation by D. Higgins, W. Vostell (ed.): Pop Architektur . Droste, Düsseldorf, 1969.
  • A Book About Love & War & Death , Nova Broadcast, Pamphlet , No. 3, San Francisco, 1969 (Cantos 2, 3).
  • A Book About Love & War & Death , Something Else Press, 1972 (5 Cantos).
  • Amigo; A Sexual Odyssey , Unpublished Editions, 1972.
  • For Eugene in Germany , Unpublished Editions, 1973.
  • Modular Poems , Unpublished Editions, 1974.
  • George Herberts Pattern Poems. In Their Tradition , Printed Editions, West Glover, VT and New York, 1977. The book is based on Higgins thesis at New York University, where he studied English from 1975 to 1979.
  • A Dialectic of Centuries. Notes towards a Theory of the New Arts , Printed Editions, New York, 1978.
  • Of Celebration of Morning; A Polysemantic Fiction , Printed Editions, 1980.
  • Piano album. Short Piano Pieces, 1962−1984 (!), Printed Editions, 1980.
  • Selected Early Works, 1955-1964 , Arts Viva, Berlin, 1982.
  • Horizons, The Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia , Carbondale, IL, Southern Illinois University Press, 1984.
  • (as ed. contributions): Pattern Poetry; A Symposium , Visible Language , Vol. 20. No. 1, 1986.
  • Pattern Poetry, Guide to an Unknown Literature , State University of New York Press, 1987
  • Giordano Bruno. On the Composition of Images, Signs and Ideas . With Manfredi Piccolomini (preface), Charle Dorian (translation). Willis, Locker & Owens Pub., 1991.
    • Translation by Brunos De Imaginum, Signorum et Idearum Compositione (1591).
  • Modernism since Postmodernism. Essays on Intermedia , San Diego State University Press, 1997.
  • Dick Higgins, Wolf Vostell. Fantastic architecture . Primary Information, 2015, ISBN 978-0990-6896-07 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jürgen Becker , Wolf Vostell (Ed.): Happenings; Fluxus, Pop art, Nouveau réalisme , Rowohlt, Reinbek, 1965, p. 435.
  2. ↑ The word event in this context became polpulär by John Cage. The meaning goes back to Henry Cowell's music theory.
  3. ↑ Inventory of the Dick Higgins Papers , 1960–1994 (Online Archives of California) [1] Index of the Dick Higgins Archives at the Getty Museum (English)
  4. ^ Peter Frank: Something Else Press; An Annotated Bibliography , McPherson, New Paltz, NY, 1983.
  5. ↑ Cf. R. Kostelanetzes classification of Something Else Press in the history of alternative publishing of literature in the USA: Richard Kostelanetz, Alternative Book Publishers , 1974 ( Memento of February 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), cf. to small literary publishers in the United States a. a. also [2] . And: R. Kostelanetz: Dick Higgins (1938–1998) . In: Performing Arts Journal , Volume 21, Number 2, May, 1999, pp. 11-17; R. Kostelanetz: Higgins, Dick . In: R. Kostelanetz (Ed.): A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes , Second Edition, Routledge, London, 2001 (under h )
  6. ^ Gabriele Knapstein: Fluxus. In: Hubertus Butin (Ed.): DuMont's glossary of terms for contemporary art. Cologne 2002, p. 86.
  7. ↑ Higgins founded Unpublished Editions in 1972 ( Published Editions since 1978 , discontinued in 1985).
  8. ^ Fantastic Architecture . Primary Information, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Higgins, Dick
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Higgins, Richard Carter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-Canadian composer, poet and early Fluxus artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Cambridge , England
DATE OF DEATH October 25, 1998
Place of death Quebec