ABSTRACT
O f the individuals who primarily established artists’ SoHo,I knew best George Maciunas, an oddly charismatic figureoddly I say, because his slight and underdressed physical presence along with his eccentric mannerisms were more disaffecting than reassuring, even to other artists. Born Jurgis Maciunas in Lithuania in 1931, he came to the United States after World War II, studied architecture at Cooper Union and Carnegie Institute of Technology, graduating from the latter in 1954. Returning to New York, he spent several years working toward a doctorate in art history at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, by common consent the most prestigious graduate school in the field. He worked in commercial design and product development before establishing in 1961 not only an uptown art gallery, A.G. Gallery, whose life was short, but an art group that he named Fluxus. He also changed his first name from Jurgis to George after the board of directors of the Lithuanian Society of New York denied him use of their auditorium for rehearsals. When he returned
again to New York in 1963 from Fluxus activities in Europe, George rented a rickety loft on Canal Street and later an apartment in a residential building on the east side (or SoHo side) of West Broadway. In 1967, at 80 Wooster Street, in a building purchased from the Miller Paper Company that had occupied it for thirty-five years before, he established Fluxhouse Cooperative II.
