George Brecht
1926	Born August 27 in New York City.
1934	Father dies, moves with mother to Atlantic City, New Jersey.
1943 - 45	Lives there until the age of 17, when he enlists for military service.
1946 - 50	Bachelor of Science (Chemistry), Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science. During this period he also studies art at the Fleischer Memorial School, Philadelphia.
1950 - 51	Completes final part of B.Sc. degree in Mexico. Studies art; his interests quickly shift from realist modes to abstraction. He takes courses with Danish nonobjective artist Thorkild Hansen in Mexico and develops a technique of working with lacquer on masonite. Upon returning to the United States he meets and marries his first wife, Marceline. They move to Brooklyn (from Forest Hills, New Jersey), where he begins working for Chas. Pfizer & Co. as a quality control chemist and inspector. He pursues the use of lacquer and enamel on masonite toward "chance paintings." Spring 1951, first recollection of awareness/discussion of John Cage.
1953 - 56	Returns to live in New Jersey (1953). Hired by Johnson & Johnson as a "quality control engineer," then moves to research department. Develops a number of new products filed with the U.S. patent office in this period. By late 1961 he has five U.S. patents unter his name and that of Johnson & Johnson. Marceline Brecht gives birth to their son, Eric Brecht (1953). Works through numerous "chance-method schemes," what he calls "a kind of corrected abstract expressionism," in his earliest known notebook (no. 1 of 31, no longer extant). Establishes a way of making "truly random paintings." Types up the text of these ideas and sends it to John Cage and Professor Vladimir Ussachevsky (Columbia University). This text is the basis for his Chance-Imagery text, which will be completed in the following year. Cage writes back and makes the visit to Brecht's home accompanied by David Tudor. First exhibition of paintings (which are made using statistics and random numbers) open at the Old Mill Gallery, Tinton Falls, New Jersey (March 8-April 11, 1956). In this period he travels to Chicago to visit an artist he admires, H. C. Westermann, and, while there, goes to the public library to study Marcel Duchamp's Boite enValise. He may also have studied The Green Box notes to The Large Glass, which would have given him access to the information about the chance experiments with air currents that Duchamp used do create the limpid rectangles in the clouds above "the bride" in The Large Glass. This information reappears in Brecht's own study of chance, the text of which is completed two years later.
1957	Finishes the text Chance-Imagery, which explores the history of chance in twentieth-centura art - from Dadaism and Surrealism to Jackson Pollock and finally to John Cage and "present-day Chance-imagists." (It is eventually published almost a decade later by the Something Else Press, as a Great Bear Pamphlet [1966]. Brecht does not edit it in the interim, adding only the note that he has since become convinced that the most important implications for chance lay in Cage's work rather than in Pollock's.) Meets the artist Robert Watts, who is teaching at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, New Jersey). Watts soon introduces him to his colleague Allan Kaprow. Watts and Brecht begin regular weekly lunch dates at a Howard Johnson's in New Jersey. Kaprow occasionally joints them. The three begin writing "Project in Multiple Dimensions," explaining the new directions of their art as a grant proposal to the Carnegie Foundation. Kaprow tells Brecht about John Cage's Experimental Composition class at the New School for Social Research in New York City.
1958	Begins attending Cage's class, often driving into the city with Kaprow and discussing the material Cage was teaching and the scoring projects he assigned for "homework." Writes first scores: Confetti Music and Three Lites (Lights) as in the context of the Cage class. Both pieces are explicitly concerned with shifting the properties of music (sound) toward the visual. Writes Room Poem (August), which includes the instruction "hang words in a room." This is the conceptual precursor to his Six Exhibits of summer 1961 ("ceiling; first wall; second wall; third wall; fourth wall; floor") and his subsequent Five Places ("write the word 'exhibit' on each of five small cards. ½½ Set each card in a place fairly distand from the others.") - both of which anticipate strategies that will be developed extensively in Conceptual art later in the 1960s. In October he begins a structural analysis of the event /"single-center event" and "multiple-center event"). He analyzes sound variables in comparison to light analogs and establishes the criterion of "duration" common to both, which will be the crux of his (space-time) event model. In distinction to Cage's model of expansive "multiplicity," Brecht's is continually refined toward a focused "singularity" with attention to very slight details within occurrences, the "borderline" between art and nonart (or particular emphases/kinds of attention).
1959	Presents his scores Candle Piece for Radios and Time-Table Music at the Cage class (July). Writes the score for Burette Music, which evolves into Drip Music, one of his most renowned and often performed scores. First one-person exhibition: Toward Events: An Arrangement at the Reuben Gallery (61 Fourth Avenue), New York City. This exhibition consists of "event objects" with which the audience should interact. The instructions for pieces like The Case and Solitaire Cabinet are printed on the brown-paper-bag invitation to the exhibition. Other pieces utilize light to emphasize their temporal nature or "event" structure. Group exhibitions include: Group 3 at Douglass College, Tugers University (with Robert Rauschenberg [Factum I & II], Bruce Conner, Joseph Cornell, Alberto Burri, Kaprow, Watts et al.), November-December; and Below Zero, where he shows The Case 2 (containing a transistor radio and a telescope, inter alia) in the context of Rauschenberg's Coca Cola Plan, Claes Oldenburg's Woman's Leg, Kaprow's Mountain, Robert Whitman's Small Cannon, Al Hansen's Hep Amazon, Ray Johnson collages, etc., in December-January. Robert Lebel's monograph on Duchamp is published in English. Brecht acquires it immediately and studies it, taking extensive notes.
1960	Concert of New Music at the Living Theatre, March 14 (with Cage, Rauschenberg, Kaprow, Maxfield et al.). Program arranged by Nicola Cernovich and James Waring. Writes the scientific treatise Innovational Research (and meta-creation). Begins working with James Waring and Dance Company: composing music and objects to accompany dance programs and designing their posters. Writes up detailed notes for Blues à Marcel Duchamp, later performed with Al Hansen; advertised in the Village Voice, April 13, 1960. Compose Preotar (text taken from the New York Daily News [April 25, 1960], Roget's Thesaurus, the New York Post, etc.). It is presented as part of A Program of Happenings, Events, Situations (organized by Al hansen) at the Evening School, Pratt Institute (Memorial Hall), New York (may 2). Writes first score explicitly called an "event" and dedicates it to Cage, entitled: Motor Vehicle Sunddown (Event) 1960 to John Cage. Establishes Contingent Publications, a self-publishing outfit to print and distribute his scores and propositions such as Motor Vehicle Sundown (Event), the core of which is first offered for 50 cents. Participates in the group exhibition New Forms-New Media I at the Martha Jackson Gallery (June) with Cabinet (Medicine Chest) from Toward Events exhibition. His Gossoon (a chamber event) is presented (on program with Robert Whitman's E.G. [an opera], electronic music by Richard Maxfield, and Happenings by Kaprow and Jim Dine) at An Evening of Sound Theater-Happenings at the Reuben Gallery. David Tudor performs Brecht's 1959 scores Candle Piece for Radios and Card Piece for Voice at Mary Bauermeister's studio in cologne (June 15). New Forms-New Media II opens at the Martha Jackson Gallery (September-October); Brecht contributes his Play Incident. Writes up notes on his event concept for James Goldsworthy. Creates the set for Peripeteia - James Waring and Dance Company, at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), New York City. It receives rave reviews in the Village Voice, December 20, and SCRAP 2, December 23, which particularly singles out Brecht's work at length.
1961	Group exhibitions include: Bewogen Bewegin (Art of Motion) at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Environments, Situations, Spaces at the Mrtha Jackson Gallery, New York (here he shows Three Chair Events with professionally printed scores available for visitors to take); The Art of Assemblage, Museum of Modern Art, New York. In the preparatory correspondence for this latter exhibition (with MoMa curator William Seitz) he clarifies the important distinction between the new genre of "Assemblage" and the term he prefers for his own work, "Arrangement" (which emphasizes time). His score Incidental Music is performed with the work of Cage and others at Darmstadt at the Internationaler Ferien kurs für Neueste Musik, Nachtprogramm III. (Also on this program in the preceding days are Theodor Adorno giving his landmark Vers une musique informelle as a paper and lectures by Pierre Boulez on Stockhausen and other topics.) His score Time Table Music and Candle Piece for Radios are published in Kulchur 3. Works on a program of his events for George Maciunas's AG Gallery (on the invitation of La Monte Young). Gallery closes before this happens. Participates (with La Monte Young, Jonas Mekas, Jackson MacLow, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Ay-O et al.) in Works by Yoko Ono, Carnegie Recital Hall, New York City. Begins sending his events (Lucifer and Exit) to large mailing list.
1962	Stops working full time for Johnson & Johnson and begins worling for them on a consultancy basis. Presents Dithyram [1961] (music and objects) at the Henry Street Playhouse, New York, sponsored by James Waring and Dance Company. Concert, the Living Theatre, january (with Earle Brown, Walter de maria, Yoko Ono, Dick Higgins et al.); this event doubles as a fund-raiser for the printing of An Anthology. Presents Variety with Ray Johnson, La Monte Young, and others at the Maidman Playhouse, New York Poets Theater (March). Contributes his event score Three Dances to Michael Horowitz's New Departures 4 (London). Creates Nectarine: An Assemblage comprising ten experimental meetings on ten Tuesdays at 9 a.m. at 80 Jefferson Street, New York City (beginning June 12). Begins devising the Yam Festival project with robert Watts. They send out their first mailings of event score cards (Watt's black text on color stock, Brecht's black on white) in an envelope stamped "Lantern Extract - an aspect of the Yam Festival" (fall/winter). Participates in Art 1963: A New Vocabulary, Arts Council YM/YWHA, Philadelphia: "an exhibit of paintings, collages, combines, machines" (with Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Marisol, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Jean Tinguely, Robert Watts et al.). First festivals fully identified as "Fluxus" begin. Brecht's scores are performed at the Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik. 14 concerts in the Hörsaal, at the Museum in Wiesbaden, Germany (September 1-23); Parallele Aufführungen Neuester Musik, Galerie Monet, Amsterdam (October); Festum Fluxorum, Copenhagen, (November 3-29); and the Festum Fluxorum, Centre de Musique, Boulevard Raspail, Paris (December 3-8).
1963	Begins consulting for the research and techinical division of Mobil Oil Company. Launches his newspaper VTRE (title taken from a "missing letter sign" on Route 1, main route from New Jersey into New York City). First issue contains works by Oldenburg, Dieter Rot, Ray Johnson, Robert Morris, Ruth Krauss et al. Festum Fluxorum-Fluxus, Staatl. Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (February-March). Fluxus-Happenings-Danger Music, Alle Teatern, Stockholm (March 1-3). Presents his events at 80 Jefferson Street, New York. (Jill Johnston, "Reviews and Previews: George Brecht," Art News 62 [May]). Culmination of the (Brecht-Watts) Yam Festival with a monthlong program of events in May at various locations in New York City (at ghe Smolin and Kornblee galleries, the Hardware Poet's Playhouse et al.) and New Jersey. New York Audiovisual Group-Happenings-Events-Advanced Musics, Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey (April 6); Fluxus Festival Amstel 47, Hypokriterion Theater, Amsterdam (June 23), and in The Hague (June 28); Fluxus Festival of Total Art, Hôtel Scribe, Nice (July 25-August 3). His score Word Event is performed (with the work of Jackson MacLow, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, La Monte Young, Simone Morris (Forti), George Maciunas, Robert Watts, Benjamin Patterson et al.) at Poesie et cetera Americaine, Biennale Internationale des Jeunes Artistes, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (October). (Mise-en-scène: Emmett Williams and Daniel Spoerri; scores translated into French by Robert Filliou.) Group exhibitions include: Gallery One, Baltimore, organized by May Wilson (April); The Popular Image, Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, D.C. (April 18-June 2); Pop Art USA, Oakland Art Museum and the California College of Arts (September 7-29); Mixed Media and Pop Art, Albright-Knox Gallery,Buffalo, New York (November 19-December 15); Hard Center, Thibault Gallery, New York. Begins working on concept for his "Action Paintings" - paintings with an event structure, often carrying a linguistic imperativ, e.g., "Start/Stop"; and "Here and Now" paintings, e.g., LA 1963. The latter is made on a trip to Los Angeles, six months prior to the "Blink" show. "Blink" show - Sissor [sic) Bros.Warehouse (with Robert Watts and Alison Knowles) - opens at the Rolf Nelson Gallery, Los Angeles. "Publicity" photographs of the artists surrounded by paintings, bed linen, scarves, posters, valises, etc., carrying the tripartite Blink screen print (top section by Watts, center word by Brecht, bottom scissors by Knowles), and Letty Eisenhauer (modeling "Blink" garments) are made at Robert Watts's studio in New York. La Monte Young's An Anthology is published; it includes Brecht's Motor Vehicle Sundown (Event) to John Cage. (Book design: George Maciunas).
1964	Participates in the exhibition Black, White and Gray at the Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut (twenty-two artists, including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Morris, Dan Flavin et al.), January 9-February 9. Reviews by Donald Judd, "Nationwide Report: Hartford-Black, White and Gray" in Arts Magazine 38 (March); and Samuel Wagstaff, "Paintings to Think About," Art News 62 (January). His newspaper VTRE is taken over by George Maciunas/"The Fluxus Editorial Council." The title changes to ccVTRE, the "cc" being Maciunas's letter code for Brecht among Fluxus artists. Brecht's name as editor remains on the masthead for two issues more. In later issues the letters "VTRE" become interspersed creatively by Maciunas into different word groups (ninetheless always appearing); e.g., the March 1964 issue is titled: "cc Valise TriangE." In this issue Brecht publishes an article called "Science River Wax." Brecht and others, Events and Entertainments (Seven Mondays of Dances, Diversions, and What-Nots), the Pocket Theater, New York City (March 23-April 27). Fluxus Concerts, Carnegie Hall, New York City (April 11-May 23). Fluxus Symphony Orchestra Concert, Carnegie Recital Hall, New York City (Juni 27). Fluxus Concert, Carnegie Hall, New York City (July 6). A Little Festival of New Musik, University of London, Goldsmiths College (July 6). Perpetual Fluxus Festival, Washington Square Gallery, New York City (October 2). Recital d'Avanguardia, Galleria Blu, Milan (November 16). Brecht and Watts initiate / organize Monday Night Letter, a series of concerts/ events (with poets, musicians, Fluxus Colleagues) every Monday night at the Café Au Go Go, New York City (November 1964-March 1965). Here he meets Robert Filliou for the first time. He dedicates his score Cloud Scissors to Filliou (which will also be called Symphony #3). Group exhibitions include: For Eyes and Ears, Cordier Ekstrom Gallery, New York, catalogue essay by Nicholas Calas; Boxes (with Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Conner et al.), Virginia Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles. In this period he begins to think of his oeuvre at large as a "book" and redefines the boxes he is beginning to make - first called "exhibits" - as "pages." The book will be called The Book of the Tumbler on Fire.
1965	One-person exhibition of wall-mounted boxes: The Book of the Tumbler on Fire: Pages from Chapter 1, at the Fischbach Gallery, New York. Going to Rome Event, New York. On the occasion of Brecht's imminent departure Al Hansen shows all the art he will be leaving in the United States and auctions it to raise money for his travels. Leaves the United States for Rome; takes up residence on via Fratelli Bandieri with Donna Jo Brewer. Begins working on an important series of chair events, including key works such as Chair with a History (now in the collection of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris); The Chair with the Rug, Hopscotch, Christmas Chair, etc. Devotes an entire notebook to these chairs. Makes sign paintings that experiment with language (many of these develop earlier "Action Painting" ideas) such as: Climatisée, No Smoking, Complet (No Vacancy), Silence, Thursday, Notice Red (a green painting), and Notice Green (red painting). In regard to these two latter, he notes: "the optical fatigue is natural and incidental." Also produces more boxes as "pages" in his Book of the Tumbler on Fire. Works on accounts of his dreams - possibly as an alternate event structure. Becomes particularly concerned with light/spectral colors, which will prove important for his chair events. Adds to his series of "symphony" scores; composes Symphony #5 & 6. Findes film reel on the street (via Fratelli Bandieri), which will become chapter 3, volume II of the Tumbler on Fire, each frame being sent to a different friend/ acquaintance. 11 from the Reuben Gallery, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Uses his Universal Machine to create a commentary on Filliou's Je Disais à Marianne. (This Universal Machine operates in a manner related to that of the I Ching and is apparently an anti-empiricist model of reality underscoring the subjectivity of our understanding of events.) It is published by Daniel Spoerri under Editions MAT MOT. Ten from Rutgers, Bianchini Gallery, New York. Corresponding with Robert Filliou. Thinking of ideas for La Cedille Qui Sourit (which he will help to establish in the following year).
1966	Leaves Rome with Donna to meet up with Robert and Marianne Filliou in Villefranche-sur-Mer (January). There they establish La Cedille Qui Sourit, a think tank for art projects, mail order events and poetry, which they will dub the "Center for Permanent Creation." One-person exhibition, Games, Fischbach Gallery, New York. Group exhibitions: Intermedia, Something Else Press Gallery, New York; Object Pomes, Something Else Press Gallery, New York. His film Entrance-Exit Music is put out by Fluxus, New York. Works with Galerie der Spiegel on publishing his Universal Machine as a multiple. Begins working with Filliou on many different ideas, including the Instructions for Assembling Suspense Poems (English and French). He writes a tribute to Raymond Queneau (author of Exercises de Style) in the form of the text: La Verre et le Bouteille. Explores the termin Connerie with Filliou, which produces many projects. Mission statement of La Cedille developed with Filliou: "La Cedille qui Sourit répond à toute questions posée et non posée." ["The Smiling Cedilla responds to all questions, asked and not asked."] Filliou recommends to Brecht the San Antonio (French) detective novels, which make extensive use of argot; this extends Brecht's long-term project/interest in language. He becomes a San Antonio devotee. At La Cedille Brecht pursues many avenues of language games and paradoxes: Traductions en Cedilloise. In Villefranche Brecht comes into closer contact with Filliou's (local) artist friends Arman (Fernandez) and Ben Vautier.
1967	The Book of the Tubler on Fire, Pages from Chapter II-VII, one-person exhibition at Galleria Schwartz, Milan. Die Erste Seite with Robert Filliou's Hand Show, Saba Studio, Villingen, Schwarzwald (the Black Forest), Germany. Develops "Faux Bureaucratic" ideas with Filliou - they write to Lloyds of London asking if they will be willing to insure La Cedille Qui Sourit. Since both have degrees they sign all "official" correspondence [on La Cedille letterhead] as Robert Filliou B. Ec. and George Brecht B. Sc. They devise "Departments" for La Cedille (e.g., Chair Dept., etc.). Filliou and Brecht write One Minute Scenarios (ongoing). Brecht goes to Paris to oversee La Cedille Qui Sourit - Offerings in attendus at Galerie Jacqueline Ranson while Filliou is in New York working at the Something Else Press on their book Games at the Cedilla OR The Cedilla Takes Off. He starts his first "Stamp Album" books. Group exhibitions include: Pictures to be Read, Poetry to be Seen, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (Jan van der Marck); and The Cold Poetic Image, Galleria Schwartz, Milan.
1968	La Cedille collaboration ends; moves to London. Performs Suitcase Eclipse with Cornelius Cardew, Christopher Hobbs, John Tilbury, and Mark Boyle (October). The Evolution of the Soda Fountain 1920-1940 (with Cardew) - a lecture with musical accompaniment and slides, Arts Lab, Drury Lane, London (November). Works on The Poetic Science (developed with Filliou), performances of: The Anatomy of the Poet, Extra-Sensory Misperception, and Brecht's The Chemistry of Music for the ICA, London. Sketches out a play on paradoxes (a conversation with slides) to be enacted by himself and Patrick Hughes. No Book, his collaborative book (with Filliou), is sent to the Something Else Press, New York; relates to Brecht's Book (1964) later published by Michael Werner, Cologne (1972). Works on a course of "experimental methods," titled "New Directions in Art" for Leeds College of Art. Topics for individual classes are: "Chance and Randomness," "Intermedia," "Games and Puzzles," "Humor," "Paradox," and "Non-Art [Anart]." At this point he is deriving his defintion of "games" from Roger Caillois. Sketches project for Århus, which includes Film 1 - Pyrotechnic Slides and Fireworks. Jill Johnston writes the article "Vive George" for the VillageVoice (August 22), telling the American audience what the expatriate artist has done since leaving the United States in 1965. Group exhibition: Primary Structure, Minimal Art, Pop Art, Anti-Form, Galerie Ricke, Kassel.
1969	Book of the Tumbler on Fire, 20 Footnotes to Vol. 1, Galerie Zwirner, Cologne (February; arranged while Brecht was in London); also at the Galerie Hansjörg Mayer, Stuttgart - these one-person exhibitions are made up of chair events called "footnotes," which refer to aspects of his oeuvre at large, The Book of the Tumbler on Fire. Importantly, he stipulates the use of light as integral to his chair arrangements, hence underscoring their event structure and relating back to his initiation of this element in his 1959 Toward Events show. Goerge Brecht, Galleria Schwartz, Milan (April 8-30); show comprises twenty-three boxes, which constitute chapter VIII, the penultimate chapter in volume 1 of The Book of the Tumbler on Fire. Boxes contain photographs of artists' hands made by Scott Hyde. Participated in Cornelius Cardew's Schooltime Compositions ["Making A"], ICA London (May). The project of La Cedille is celebrated in a major exhibition, La Cedille Qui Sourit-Center of Permanent Creation at the Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (Johannes Cladders). Exhibition of George Brecht chairs, which relate to the "footmotes" shown earlier in the year at the Zwirner and Mayer galleries: It is titled Selected Works from Volume I, Ahmanson Gallery, L.A. County Museum of Art (Maurice Tuchman, Jane Livingston). Film Works and Play with Robert Filliou. By August begins work on the Land Mass Translocations - theoretical shifting of geopolitical territories transposed onto real maps - under the banner (and letterhead) of Brecht and MacDiarmid Research Associates (MacDiarmid was Brecht's family name before he changed it). His principle of Land Mass Translocation is put into practice by the Scratch Orchestra: "realization of the journey of the Isle of Wight Westwards by iceberg to Tokyo Bay," (Chelsea Town Hall, London (November). Develops his Fluid Dynamics of the Alphabet as chapter 1 of volume II of the Tumbler on Fire. Delivers The Chemistry of Music as a lecture, Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Group exhibitions include: Art by Telephone, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (Jan van der Marck); Pläne und Projekte als Kunst, Kunsthalle Berne; Pop Art, Hayward Gallery, London; Galleria Schwartz at Marcy's, Gallery, New York. He moves from London to Düsseldorf (November).
1970	Land Mass Translocation, one-person show at Eugenia Butler Gallery, Los Angeles. Events by George Brecht: Selections from 'Water Yam' is performed by John Tilbury (and others) at the Royal Court Theater, Sloane Square, London (November 22). Group exhibitions include: Das Ding als Objekt, Kunsthalle, Nürnberg; happening & fluxus, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; Information, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Strategy: Get Arts (International Festival), Edingburgh.
1971	Group exhibitions include: In Memoriam Friends, Galerie Eat Art, Düsseldorf; Art & Technology, L.A. County Museum, Los Angeles. In late 1971 leaves Düsseldorf for Cologne.
1972	One-person exhibitions: Boxes, Michael Werner Gallery, Cologne, and Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris. Group exhibitions: George Brecht / Rudolf Rieser, Galerie Reante Fassbender, Munich and Befragung der Realität / Bildwelten Heute, Documenta 5, Kassel (June 30-October 8, 1972. Here Herr Ebert (?) shows the important event realization/installation Tonnère de Liège. This is then purchased for the Ludwig Collection.
1973	One-person exhibitions: Chair Event, at Michael Werner Gallery, Cologne, and El Sourdog Hex, Onnasch Gallery, Spring Street, New York, with catalogue contributions by Peter Frank, Robin Page, Al Hansen, and Ray Johnson. Brecht's Autobiography of dreams is published by Galerie der Spiegel, Cologne. He contributes a statement entitled "Notes on the Inevitable Relationship GB/MD, IfThere Is One," to the Duchamp retrospective organized by Anne D'Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1975	His paradox book with Patrick Hughes, Vicious Circles: A Panoply of Paradoxes, is published by Doubleday (New York), and three years later as Die Scheinwelt des Paradoxons, by Friedr. Vieweg Verlagsgesellschaft (1978) in Germany and by Penguin Books in the UK and subsequently in the United States as Vicious Circles: An Anthology of Paradoxes (1978, reprinted 1980, 1981). One-person exhibitions include: Donna dei Nodi, Galleria Multipla, Milan, and Le San Antonio Show, Galerie BAMA, Paris (based on objects in the San Antonio detective novels, which he built from items found in flea markets).
1976	Begins working on a new phase of his event research - a new chapter of The Book of the Tumbler on Fire - the Crystal Boxes. These will ultimately form the entire volume Interviewer of The Book of the Tumbler on Fire, chapters 1 through 7. He sketches the components of the boxes in his 1975 notebook as follows: "18 II 75: Evaporation; Fixation; Meditation; Crystallization Colors: Violet (Kaliumchromsulfat), Blue (Kupfersulfat), Green (Nickelsulfat), Yellow (Eisen [III] sulfat), Orange (Kaliumdichromat), Red (Kobalt [II] chlorid)." And decides upon cloth-covered casements. This is arguably an extension of the logic he theorizes in the early 1960s whereby the readymade ultimately moves toward the "self made." The crystals alter themselves in petri dishes at the center of intricate box constellations. Over the next decade he will make a total of eight of these crystal boxes, each set inside a different compartmentalized case filled with other objects and superimposed with calligraphic text etched in glass. Many of these boxes entered the collection of Hermann Braun soon thereafter. A key criterion animating the crystal boxes is paradox, a long-standing interest. Contemporaneously with the initiation of the Crystal Boxes project he commits himself seriously to gaining proficiency in Chinese. His close friend the collector Hermann Braun presents him with volumes [I-IV] of one of the most authoritative and exhaustive treatises on China, Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China. This gift, on the occasion of Brecht's fiftieht birthday, is an important testimony to the focus of the artist's energies at that moment. Solo exhibitions include: Assemblages, Studio Framart, Naples; Galerie La Bertesca, Milan; Art Boxes, Kunsthandel Brinkman, Amsterdam; and What's Time; Galerie Marika Malacorda, Geneva. Group exhibitions: Paris-New York, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Boîtes, Arc 2, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
1978	Explorations of language and the relationship of calligraphic / pictographic signifiers to Western words continue. He begins to take the translating he has always practiced (through many notebooks, ever since living in Rome: first Italian, then French and German) into a more complex direction. He embarks upon a study of the Chinese language toward a (personal) translation of the ancient text the Hsin Hsin Ming, by Sen T'san (third patriarch of Chinese Zen Buddhism, d. 606 A.D.). This is an important year, with the first major monograph and retrospective exhibition appearing almost simultaneously: Henry Martin's An Introduction to George Brecht's Tumbler on Fire: Eine Heterospektive von George Brecht [Beyond Events: A George Brecht Heterospective] (Johannes Gachnang). Participates in Aspekte de 60er Jahre/ Aus der Sammlung Reinhard Onnasch, Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1978. George Maciunas dies: Brecht and Fluxus colleagues collaborate on a posthumous Festschrift.
1979	Participates in European Dialogue: The 3rd Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. The "minimalist" translation of the Hsin Hsin Ming, which he had initiated and worked on extensively, is published as a trilingual special edition (G.B., English, R. Filliou, French, A. Fabri, German; calligraphy by Takako Saito) by Lebeer Hossmann (Brussels/Hamburg, 1980).
1981	Works with Rudolf Rieser to produce a series of special edition books (no words, all images; selected by Brecht, reproduced with randomness of color and with running font ink [press] on rough cut stock; three color books and one black and white) - Analphabeticon: Encylopedia For the use of the Lettered and the Unlettered ¦¦ Analphabetikon: Enzyklopädie Zum Gebrauch für Leser und Nichtleser (Salzburg: Publications contemporianes, 1981). Group exhibitions include: Westkunst, Museum der Stadt Köln, Cologne (Kasper König), and Judson Dance Theater 1962-66, Bennington College, Vermont.
1982	Fluxus Wiesbaden 1962-1982, Museum Wiesbaden*
1983	His hörspiele Hsin Hsing Ming is broadcast on West German radio.
1984	Ten Event Glasses der Sammlung Onnasch, Mönchengladbach, Galerie BAMA, Paris (one-person exhibition). Group exhibitions: Von Hier Aus, Messegelände Halle 13, Düsseldorf. (Kasper König); Blam! The Explosion of Pop, Minimalism and Performance, 1958-64, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (Barbara Haskell). Receives the Will Grohmann art prize, Academy of Arts, Berlin. The preliminary stages of his studies into Chinese are shown in a "calligraphy" exhibition, Eins, Zwei, Drei, Ai Sengai, at the Herta Klang Gallery, Cologne.
1985	Pages from the Book of the Tumbler on Fire, Galerie BAMA Paris.
1986	Retrospective selection of works for LYON 1986: Octobre des Arts, Musée Saint Pierre, Lyon, for which he gives a new interview with Irmeline Lebeer that substantially expands upon their earlier Croniques d'Art Vivant piece (1973) and presents a careful account of the increasingly complex direction of his researches through the 1980s. Participates in Europa-Amerika, at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne.
1987	His hörspiele Silent Music broadcast on West German radio. Participates in the group exhibition Sculptur Projekcte für Münster (Kasper König).
1988-90	Group exhibitions include: übrigens sterben immer die anderen Marcel Duchamp und die Avantgarde seit 1950, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (1988) (Alfred Fischer, Dieter Daniels); Fluxus: Selections from the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection, Library, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1988); Stationen de Moderne, Museum of Modern Art, Berlin (1988-89); Wortlaut, Galerie Schüppenhauer, Cologne (1989); The Readymade Boomerang, Eighth Biennale of Sydney (Rene Block); Ubi Fluxus ibi motus 1990-1962, Venice Biennale (Achille Bonito Oliva).
1991	Hermann Braun and Dieter Daniels work with Walther König to publish Brecht's early notebooks. They publish the first three (Junie 1958-August 1959), including detailed footnotes largely composed by Hermann Braun and an interview between Brecht, Braun, Daniels, and Kasper König. These are followed sic years later by notebooks 4 and 5 (September 1959-November 1960).
1992-99	Group exhibitions include: Rolywholyover: A Circus - John Cage, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (1993); Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object, Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art (1994); Neo-Dada: Redefining Art 1958-1962, Scottsdale Center of Contemporary Art (1994-1995) (Susan Hapgood); Fluxus Virus 1962-1992, Galerie Schüppenhauer, Cologne, and Territorium Artis, Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn (1992); Sechziger Jahre: Die Neuen Abenteuer der Objekte, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and Esthétique du livre d'artiste, Bibliothèque nationale de France (1997); Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1998) (Paul Schimmel); Chronos & Kairos; Museum Fridericianum Kassel (1999); Off Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-Garde 1957-63, the Newark Museum (1999) (Joseph Jacobs, Joan Marter).
2001-02	Group exhibitions include: Les Années Pop, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (Mark Francis et al.); Onnasch: Aspects of Contemporary Art, MACBA, Barcelona (2001), Museu Serralves, Porto (2002). Marries Herta Klang; sends announcements with only four words: "George Brecht, Herta Brecht."
*Fluxus events at which Brecht's work was performed have now become too numerous to mention. Only several of the most prominent are listed here.
Text by Julia Robinson. Julia Robinson is currently working on a dissertation on George Brecht at Princeton University.