Fluxus in a Bowl of Tea

By Marc Lancet
Fluxus in a Bowl of Tea: The Art of Marc Lancet and
Sabine Turpeinen at the Fluxus Plus museum in Potsdam,
Germany is an exhibition of ceramics designed for the Japanese
tea ceremony (Chanoyu). This venue, a museum devoted to the
Fluxus art movement, invites viewers to contemplate for the first
time the similarities between the Fluxus artists of the mid 1900s
and the 16th century practice of the Japanese tea ceremony.

The human quest to transform the spirit, the yearning for transcendence, the urge
toward enlightenment is at the heart of both the Fluxus and Chanoyu (the Japanese way of tea).
Both the contemporary art movement Fluxus and the 16th century zen inspired tea ritual of
Chanoyu seek the elevation of the human spirit though art.

Wolf Vostell, the Fluxus artist declared in his art happening In Ulm, um Ulm und um Ulm
, “Happening = life – Life as art – no retreat from but into reality – making it possible to
experience and live its essence – not to abandon the world but find a new relation to it – to let
the participant experience himself consciously in the happening --- to shift the environment into
new contexts—to create new meanings by breaking up the old – let the participant experience
indeterminacy as a creative force – to uncover and let uncover nonsense in sense –lack of
purpose as purpose – open form as form – eccentricity – participants and performers instead of
spectators.”1

Vostell could be describing a tea ceremony

with these words he used to explain his approach to
performance art and happenings. Easily, with a few
cultural shifts, we could be back in the 1500s hearing
a description of Chanoyu (Japanese Tea Ceremony)
as practiced by Sen no Rikyu.

Here again we see the sympathy of spirit,

aesthetics and purpose as we contemplate the words
of Okakura Kakuzo , “Meanwhile, let us have a sip of
tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos,
the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing
of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of
evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of
VOAEX, 1976, by Wolf Vostell: Museo things.” 2
Vostell Malpartida, Extremadura, Spain

Just as Vostell speaks of experiencing and living life’s essence, of the participant
experiencing himself consciously, of uncovering nonsense in sense – so too Kakuzo calls us to
appreciate the sounds and beauty of the moment while lingering in the beautiful foolishness of
things.

These are art or aesthetic disciplines beneficent in their focus on improving the human
condition, on bettering lives by challenging or guiding perceptions and awareness through art.
 The tea bowl (chawan) is at the heart of the
Japanese Tea Ceremony; this ceremony which
invites us to wake to the world. Or from a Fluxus point
of view, each tea bowl may be understood as an
object to be employed in an orchestrated event
intended to awaken participants to the present
moment. The notes of the tea host in preparation for
an upcoming ceremony could be seen as an event
score for a Fluxus happening.

Chawan (Tea Bowl) by Sabine Turpeinen

Of course it is easier to delve into the differences between Fluxus and Chanoyu than it is
to discover through contemplation the similarities. The quotations above clearly demonstrate
that while Vostell employs a more intellectual and stilted language appealing to reason,
Okakura’s language is poetic and appeals more to the senses. And yet, might it be more
instructive, more beneficial to illuminate their commonalities? Both Fluxus and Chanoyu
challenge our preconceptions while entreating us to find a lucid, more attentive way to
participate in our lives.

Jacquelynn Baas, in her book, Smile of the Buddha: Eastern Philosophy and Western Art,
states, “A number of artists associated with Fluxus have acknowledged the importance of Zen.”3
Both Chanoyu and Fluxus are informed by Zen Buddhism. They both employ the non-linier, the
sub-rational strategies of Zen. As with a Zen koan, Fluxus events present experiences and
visions not easily absorbed rationally. Like the koan, the participant is presented with
paradoxical situations that often short-circuit the intellect. Left without the usual intellectual
tactics for understanding, the participant may experience satori or a sudden flash of insight
leading to deeper understanding.

This Zen teaching strategy is also common to the teaching of tea. Rikyu composed a now
famous poem in which he explains the process of the tea ceremony:

Chanoyu is nothing but this:

Boil water, infuse tea, and drink.

That is all you need to know.

Rikyu’s meaning is often lost when this poem is quoted out

of context. Rikyu recited this poem in response to a visitor’s inquiry
as to the true mysteries of tea. In response to Rikyu’s verse the
visitor said with an air of disgust, “All this I already know.” Rikyu,
demonstrating a mastery of teaching through paradox said, ”Well if
there is anyone who knows it already, I shall be very pleased to
become his pupil.”4 Sen no Rikyu
Writing about Joseph Beuys performance art, Emily Rekow explains, “Beuys attempted
to create an atmosphere for his viewer that would unite the intuitive, passionate soul with the
intellectual mind, and thus prepare the individual for a spiritual evolution.” Joseph Beuys, clearly
indicates the vital role that paradox, this sub rational strategy plays in his own work. “Art is not
there to provide knowledge in direct ways. It produces deeper perceptions of experience….Art is
not there to be simply understood, or we would have no need of Art.”5
 Chanoyu’s main vehicle for transcendence and
transformation is beauty – the sublime. While Fluxus, aiming
for the same awakening employs shock tactics, irony and
blasphemy, courting the unexpected. And yet aren’t these
Fluxus tactics the perfect description of one of Chanoyu’s
proudest moments, perhaps its most famous event, that of
Sen no Rikyu and the Morning Glories?

Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi arranged with Sen No

Rikyu to view his exquisite garden bursting with the most
beautiful morning glories. Hideyoshi walked from his palace
to the tea house. With every step though the very early
morning he built his anticipation and expectations of viewing
the abundance of flowers in Rikyu’s garden.

In preparation, Rikyu selected the most sublime example of

the flower, and gave orders that all the others should be cut
and discarded from the garden. The shogun arrived at
exactly the appointed time and was aghast to find rather than
the abundance of flowers he was expecting, a garden
stripped of the fabulous morning glories. Shaken and angry
he continued up the quiet stone walkway to Rikyu's tea
room. He completed the symbolic ceremony of “washing the Hanairei (Flower Vase) by Marc Lancet
dust of the world from his heart” by ladling water over his hands from the serine tsubakai or
stone basin. Then, as is the custom, he humbled himself by crawling through the half height
passage that was the entrance to Rikyu’s chashitsu or teahouse.

Simmering with barely restrained anger at Rikyu’s slight of destroying the very flowers
he had come to see, Hideyoshi entered the intimate tea room, immediately warmed from the
steam hissing from the kettle over the brazier. Crossing the threshold he encountered the
tokonoma or alcove that is positioned to greet all who enter. There Rikyu had arranged in a
simple vase the one sublime Morning Glory he had chosen for this purpose before having all
others eliminated from view. Hideyoshi’s heart and spirit soared in appreciation of this beautiful
flower arrangement, sublime in its simplicity.

And in this moment he was open to the beauty of his existence. Did he also hold some
grudging respect for the man who risked his life to bring this moment of serenity to the ruler of
all Japan? For Rikyu in this “art action” this “happening” was risking nothing less than his life.
Many men had been beheaded for smaller infractions that displeased Hideyoshi.

In this courageous, aesthetically insightful and exquisitely choreographed act, Rikyu

employed shock tactics, irony and blasphemy. Rikyu, knowing Hideyoshi’s expectations, did the
unexpected and startled his patron into a deep appreciation of essence of the beauty of all of
nature through the agency of one morning glory blossom. This decisive action so crucial in
communicating the true spirit of Chanoyu can be seen as a precursor or prototype of the Fluxus
event or happening.
 Likewise, many important Fluxus works of art
seem imbued with the aesthetics of Rikyu’s wabi cha
(Rikyu’s application of Japanese aesthetic austerity to
the tea ceremony.) Opening Yoko Ono’s “A box of
smile” 1971 and gazing inside presents the participant
with the true source of happiness in life. Participation in
ceremony is just as vital for Fluxus as it is for Chanoyu.
Opening the box, the viewer is participating in a
ceremonial gesture, and gazing in to discover the
bottom of the box is lined with a mirror. The box reflects
the participant back to themselves. For the briefest of
instants, the mirror reflects the spontaneous smile of
the viewer. Thus the viewer as collaborator completes
Ono’s composition or ceremony. This moment Ono
creates for the participant is akin to that created by the
tea host as the guest/participant lifts the tea bowl to
their lips and gazes upon the green tea in the vast

space of the chawan (tea bowl) – a private moment Yoko Ono’s Happening “Cut Piece” first
where the guest comes into full awareness of performed in 1964 at the Sogetsu Art
themselves in the beauty of the moment with the tea Center in Tokyo, created an austere
host and guests. atmosphere focused on human
Fluxus artist George Brecht clearly relationship.
demonstrates the Fluxus commitment to guiding people to awareness of the present moment in
his writings. ”Rather than an image of a concrete moment in life, it is a signal preparing one for
the moment itself. Event scores prepare one for an event to happen in one’s own now.” 6

Both Fluxus artists and a tea host are focused on this communication, preparing,
organizing and creating to make circumstances ideal for the participant/guest/viewer to have the
opportunity of a transcendent experience. Sen Shoshitsu XV, the Grand Master of the Urasenke
Tradition of Tea sums it up, “By experiencing this spiritual communication between people, the
way of tea in the true sense will be acquired.” 7

Jaqueine Baas explains, in her excellent book Fluxus and the Essential Qustions of Life,
“Fluxus organizer George Maciunas’s philosophical-political position (is) that the end of art, in
the sense of its goal, is the end of art, in the sense of its absorption into the practice of being
human. His statement that “Fluxus’ objectives are social (not aesthetic) exemplifies Fluxus’
intent … to empower people to engage with essential issues via the Fluxus approach to live as
connection and flow.” 8

Baas describes Fluxus as the first interdisciplinary, global, artist-run arts collective. 9
Certainly Chanoyu shares the global footprint of Fluxus, for while it is uniquely Japanese, you
can enjoy tea ceremonies around the world, from Japan to the Czech Republic, from Denmark
to San Francisco, from England to China. Tea, like Zen Buddhism is found on every continent.
Both Fluxus and Chanoyu placed great importance on humanities’ relationship to nature. Both engaged the participants
contemplative capacities. Chanoyu, brought the participant into relationship with nature through a focus on natural beauty.
In works like Joseph Beuys “I like America and America likes me”, Fluxus artists employ shocking strategies to present
unexpected challenges to the participant.

In contemporary art, so much effort and energy is expended in distancing any new
artwork being contemplated from all that has come before. Yet so much is lost when the
contributions and parallels of great traditions across time and cultures go unexamined.

Could there be any two practices in this world more disparate than Fluxus and
Chanoyu? Yet as we focus on their similarities we discover many, some quite profound and
most instructive. That is the heart of this inquiry.

No claims of similar origins, or common purpose, or even parallel methodologies are

being posited here. No suggestion is offered that somehow Wolf Vostell would be an ideal tea
host or that the great tea innovator Senno Oribe could have moved us deeply in the 1500s with
an installation employing concrete, televisions and live domestic turkeys (as Vostell did in his
installation for the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art almost 400 years after Oribe’s
tragic death.)

And still, we discover in these uncanny

commonalities between seemingly disparate
practices something about the human drive to
lift the awareness or spirit of fellow human
beings. And the vital role that art plays in these
endeavors. In juxtaposing Chanoyu and Fluxus
we have found two human practices that have
drawn from Zen Buddhism, history, culture and
above all fine art to achieve the lofty goal of
elevating the human spirit, challenging
perception and opening our awareness to
greater possibilities. Both Fluxus artists and
Tea hosts seem to satisfy Rainier Maria Rilke’s Chawan (tea bowl) by Marc Lancet
definition of the task of a fine artist “(The
artist's task in our world is) to prepare in our hearts the way for those gentle, mysterious,
trembling transformations, from which alone the understandings and harmonies of a serener
future will proceed.”10

The exhibition Fluxus in a Bowl of Tea: The Art of Marc Lancet and
Sabine Turpeinen at the Fluxus Plus museum in Potsdam, Germany
runs from August 24 to September 2, 2012. This will be
accompanied by lectures, FLUXUS- actions, presentations of the
Urasenke tea ceremony, concerts and seminars. Contemplating
these works of art in this unique museum environment, you can
almost imagine Sen no Rikyu, Joseph Beuys, Sen no Oribe and
Vostell all sitting down to tea and engaging in a deeply appreciative
dialogue.

Much is to be gained from the practice of considering ceramic art in

the context of all fine art accomplishments. This exhibition offers an expanded contemplation of
ceramic artwork; modeling an analysis which encompasses relationships to artistic endeavor,
past and present.

For more information, www.fluxus-plus.de/ikebana-kongress-2012.html, www.marclancet.com,

www.ikebana-tee-keramik.de/index.php.

1
Wolf Vostell, 1970. From the Happening: In Ulm, um Ulm und um Ulm; quoted in: Mariellen
Sanford ed., Happenings and Other Acts (Worlds of Performance); Oxford: Routledge, 1995:
pg. 275
2
Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea, Boston; Rutland, VT; Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1956: pg.
17
3
Jacquelynn Baas, Smile of the Buddha: Eastern Philosophy and Western Art, Berkeley
California, University of California Press, 2005: pg. 161
4
A.L. Sadler, Cha-no-yu: The Japanese Tea Ceremony, Boston; Rutland, VT; Tokyo: Charles
E. Tuttle, 1933: pg. 102
5
Emily Rekow, Joseph Beuys: Multiples, “Actions”, Minneapolis MN, Walker Art Center, 1997:
6
Jacquelynn Baas, Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life, Hanover, NH, Hood Museum of
Art, Dartmouth College, 2011: pg. 2
7
Sasaki Sanmi, Chado, the Way of Tea, A Japanese Tea Master’s Almanac, Boston; Rutland,
VT; Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 2002: pg. ii
8
Jacquelynn Baas, Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life, Hanover, NH, Hood Museum of
Art, Dartmouth College, 2011: pg. 2
9
Jacquelynn Baas, Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life, Hanover, NH, Hood Museum of
Art, Dartmouth College, 2011: pg. 3
10
Rainer Maria Rilke, comments on the Duino Elegies
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marc Lancet is an American artist. An exhibition of his work and the
German ceramic artist Sabine Turpeinen will be featured at the Museum Fluxus + in Potsdam,
Germany, from August 22 to September 2, 2012. For more information, go to www.fluxus-
plus.de or www.marclancet.com.

Lancet lives in Davis, California, with his wife Annette and their daughter Evan. He is the co-
author of Japanese Wood-fired Ceramics. Lancet’s work is in numerous collections, including
The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Center of Shigaraki, Japan; The International Ceramic
Research Center(Guldagergaard), Denmark; the United States Embassy, in Estonia; the Asian
Art Museum of San Francisco; and the Pottery Workshop of Shanghai and Jingdezhen, China.

Lancet’s work has appeared in a number of books, among them Clay and Glazes for the
Ceramic Artist by Rhodes and Hopper, Hands in Clay by Speight and Toki, Functional Pottery
by Hopper, Ceramic Extruder for the Studio Potter by Conrad, and Raku, A Practical Approach
by Brafman. His writing and art have been published in Ceramics Monthly, Ceramics: Art and
Perspective, Ceramics Technical, Clay Times, The Log Book, Turning Wheel, and The Suisun
Valley Review.

Lancet is a professor of Sculpture and Ceramics at Solano Community College in Northern

California. He has been a visiting professor of sculpture at Portland State University and at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. He exhibits and teaches internationally.