Edizioni Conz

Robert Watts, New Yorker Cartoon, 1987, Silkscreen on cloth, 283 × 260 cm, Edition of 50 plus I AP and 2 exhibition copies

Courtesy of Archivio Conz, Berlin

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Robert Watts (1923 Burlington, Iowa, USA – 1988 Martins Creek, Pennsylvania, USA) was among the most enigmatic protagonists of Fluxus. With Brecht, Watts organized the Yam Festival, a legendary project that combined mail art, Fluxus, and intermedia through a unique artistic platform and an exceptional program. By promoting the transient side of events and Happenings with their unrestricted and anti-commercial nature, Yam’s first phase involved collecting and distributing event cards by mail. Watts’s interventions with Fluxus publications, events, and festivals are countless, producing works such as Flux Timekit (1967), A Flux Atlas (1973), and Light Flux Kit (1973). With the same willingness to radically enter everyday life, Watts created objects, posters, and temporary tattoos for Implosions Inc., a company Maciunas founded together with the businessman Herman Fine in 1967 to mass produce easy-to-distribute works. Watts strongly supported the Fluxhouse Cooperatives, the extensive rehabilitation program for SoHo based on collective ownership. His works are held in collections at The Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Tate in London, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.