Henry Flynt (born 1940) is a philosopher, musician and anti-art activist best known for his former association to the Fluxus movement. In 1962, he coined the term concept art to refer to
an art "of which the material is 'concepts,' as the material of for ex. music is sound". He is especially concerned with logical paradox and contradiction. His philosophical works seek to refute analytic philosophy and logical positivism with their own means, proposing instead an "acognitive culture" and an idealism that, unlike the idealism of continental European philosophy, is based on meta-mathematical and formal-logical reasoning.
Like his friend La Monte Young he studied with Pandit Pran Nath and turned against the Western high-cultural tradition of music. In 1965, he and George Maciunas picketted a concert of Karlheinz Stockhausen bearing the slogans "Down with art!" and "Demolish serious culture!".
Another artist Flynt collaborates with and whose work is closest to his understanding of concept art is Christer Hennix . Flynt's philosophy, laid out principally in the 1975 book "Blueprint for a Higher Civilization", is also credited by many Neoists as a major influence on them.
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Last updated: 10-11-2005 05:50:07
