Overview

The first monographic study of American artist Alison Knowles, a significant yet overlooked cofounder of the Fluxus movement.   Alison Knowles stands out as the sole female artist among the founders of Fluxus, yet she has remained an enigmatic, underrecognized figure in the history of art. Performing Chance fills a gap in the record, bringing to light Knowles’s transformative body of work as it evolved from abstract painting in the late 1950s, to silkscreens, print media, and performance in the early 1960s, to groundbreaking works in digital poetry, acoustical art, and large-scale installations in the late 1960s-70s.   Through her access to previously unpublished archival materials and direct interviews with the artist, Nicole L. Woods provides close readings of pivotal works, disclosing the ways Knowles instituted formal tactics that moved beyond modernist painting, championed principles of indeterminacy and chance, and fostered sociopolitical consciousness. Situating Knowles’s innovations in various media within the distinct cultural contexts of Wiesbaden, London, Paris, New York City, and Los Angeles, Performing Chance brings this key artist back to her rightful place as a leader of the postwar avant-garde and provides a nuanced history of the role of women artists in Fluxus and beyond.  

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9780226654942

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Reviews

“Performing Chance unfurls the radical innovations of Alison Knowles, a pioneering force within Fluxus whose groundbreaking practice benefits from Woods’s sustained attention. Drawing from unprecedented access to Knowles’s archive and extensive interviews, Woods theorizes the artist’s ‘dialectics of chance’—a proto-feminist methodology that fundamentally reshaped understandings of chance operations, domestic labor, and the boundaries between art and life. From the artist’s influential textual propositions and food events to immersive environments and visionary experiments with computer-generated poetry, this richly detailed study positions Knowles at the forefront of key developments in contemporary art practice.” -- Natilee Harren, author of ""Fluxus Forms""

Author Information

Nicole L. Woods is a Los Angeles–based art historian and critic. She is distinguished visiting professor of modern and contemporary art at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.  

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