Blueprint for a Higher Civilization

by Henry Flynt, Germano Celant (Editor)

This book collects the artist’s early philosophical writings on concept art and cognitive nihilism. Includes photographs by Jack Smith and Tony Conrad of Flynt’s anti-art demonstrations against MoMA and the Lincoln Center in 1963.

Genres: Philosophy, Art

206 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1975

Reviews

[channel]

before the recent publications by João Simões, starting with Three Essays on Spirituality and Art (2020), this book was essentially the sole public-facing publication of Flynt's written work. other possible contenders are the "Down With Art" pamphlet and the "Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture" pamphlet, both even rarer, and both providing glimpses far too outdated and far too narrow into a body of profound work that seems to have never been taken seriously.

this collection is deeply eclectic, its omissions as intriguing as its inclusions, and represents, for better or for worse, what seems to be Flynt *just barely before* a major philosophical breakthrough that would define the rest of his career: Meta-Technology and Personhood. Meta-Technology and Personhood authentically serve as a blueprint for a higher civilization: the eponymous Blueprint here is purely aspirational.

this book, then, represents the fragments of a large number of angles through which Flynt was working towards a basis for such a blueprint. they're astonishing, insightful, mindbending, but ultimately -- if limited to what is presented within these two covers -- incoherent.

which isn't a bad thing, entirely. a book as a collection of demanding psychic exercises still is extremely worthwhile to have around. i just want to advise any would-be readers how much more there is -- and there is so, so much more.

i have hopefully made this book far far more accessible than previously, as i located missing pages from the scan on monoskop, cleaned it up to be readable, and threw it on internet archive. rip to everyone selling this for $1000. no longer are these efforts for constructing a better world hideously gatekept by ppl who assume the contents here to be merely art

[alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

this letter from terry riley attached to the down with art section:

...Now about this hip radical new theory of pure recreation.--Well--alor! its simply what people do anyway but don’t realize it but it seems that what people “do anyway and don’t realize it’’ will not be fully appreciated until “what people do in the name of art’’ is eliminated. If art can be relegated to obscurity, if some one can get John Coltrane to stop blowing, if someone can smash up all the old Art tatum records as well as all the existing pianos, if someone can get all that stuff out of those museums, If someone can only burn down all those concert halls, movie houses, small galleries as well as rooms in private houses that contain signs of art, If someone can do in all the cathedrals and monuments bridges etc, If someone can get rid of the sun, moon, stars, ocean, desert trees birds, bushes mountains, rivers, joy, sadness inspiration or any other natural phenomenon that reminds us of the ugly scourge art that has preoccupied and plagued man since he can remember then yes then at last Henry Flynt, sorry!

[Kacper Zaduszny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horribly hard to find, but once you do, it turns your head inside out.