Alison Knowles
1933–

Introduction

Alison Knowles (born 1933) is an American visual artist known for her installations, performances, soundworks, and publications. Knowles was a founding member of the Fluxus movement, an international network of artists who aspired to merge different artistic media and disciplines. Criteria that have come to distinguish her work as an artist are the arena of performance, the indeterminacy of her event scores resulting in the deauthorization of the work, and the element of tactile participation. She graduated from Pratt Institute in New York with an honors degree in fine art. In May 2015, she was awarded an honorary doctorate degree by Pratt.

In the 1960s, she was an active participant in New York City's downtown art scene, collaborating with influential artists such as John Cage and Marcel Duchamp. During this time she began producing event scores, or performances that rework the everyday into art. Knowles's inclusion of visual, aural, and tactile elements sets her art apart from the work of other Fluxus artists.

From July 20, 2022 to February 12, 2023, Knowles was the subject of by Alison Knowles: A Retrospective (1960–2022) at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Wikidata identifier

Q243078

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Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Accessed November 11, 2024.

Country of birth

United States

Roles

Artist, mixed-media artist, performance artist

ULAN identifier

500069909

Names

Alison Knowles

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Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed November 11, 2024.


On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

On the Hour projects can contain motion and sound. To respect your accessibility settings autoplay is disabled.