From Painting to Participation
Alison Knowles (born 1933, New York City) is one of the central figures of the Fluxus movement, a poet, performer, and installation artist who turned cooking, paper, and random sounds into art. Trained initially as a painter at Pratt Institute, she soon abandoned the canvas for something larger and more inclusive: life itself. Her art invites touch, smell, chance, and community, transforming the banal into the sublime.
Becoming Fluxus
In the late 1950s, Knowles met composer John Cage while studying at the New School for Social Research. Cage’s philosophy of chance and attention to everyday sound deeply shaped her practice. She soon became part of the Fluxus circle organized by George Maciunas, alongside Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, and others who blurred art and life. Her participation in Fluxus Festivals of the early 1960s helped define performance as an open field of poetic gesture.
Event Scores and Performance as Poetry
Knowles’s art often takes the form of event scores, short, open-ended instructions that anyone can perform. Works like Make a Salad (1962) invite participants to chop, mix, and share food as a collective ritual. Others, like Shuffle (1961), turn the sound of cards or paper into a musical composition. These simple acts dissolve hierarchies between artist and audience, art and life, gesture and meaning.
Sound, Chance and Paper
Continuing Legacy
Even into her nineties, Knowles continues to create new installations and performances worldwide. Her recent retrospectives at MoMA and the Art Institute of Chicago reaffirm her importance as one of the founders of participatory art. Her works remain vivid reminders that art can emerge from humble materials, lettuce leaves, paper, words, and that the act of attention itself is creative.
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