George Brecht

George Brecht (New York, 1926 – 2008), born George Ellis MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer who also worked as a professional chemist. He was a key member of Fluxus, the international group centred on George Maciunas, and one of the figures who anticipated conceptual art and participatory art.

After World War II he studied chemistry and worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Mobil Oil, while developing an art built on chance. Between 1958 and 1959 he studied with John Cage at The New School, where he refined the Event Score, a short instruction for everyday tasks that could be carried out in public, in private, or not at all. In 1959 he presented Towards Events at the Reuben Gallery in New York, a show of works that viewers could manipulate. With Robert Watts he organised the Yam Festival (1962-1963), regarded as an important precursor of Fluxus.

His best-known work is Drip Music (1962). His legacy can be seen in participatory art and in the conceptual art that followed. Brecht described his art as a way of ensuring that the details of everyday life stopped going unnoticed.