"Often sitting on chairs around a low table and sipping on earthy matcha or lunching on salads and the tuna fish sandwiches she prepared from her enduring score for performance, The Identical Lunch ("a tuna fish sandwich on wheat toast with lettuce and butter, no mayo, and a large glass of buttermilk or a cup of soup"), which she had routinely eaten since 1967 (at points in her life, every day) and meticulously documented in Journal of the Identical Lunch in 1971,"
"Alison famously threw out or burned anything she decided she was "done with," including her own early Abstract Expressionist paintings, made under the tutelage of Adolph Gottlieb at the Pratt Institute in the mid-'50s.) I was working on a doctoral thesis on Fluxus, and when I visited, Alison made me feel not only welcome for my troubles, but wanted. I was always struck by the depth of her generosity and kindness, which continued right up to her passing on October 29, 2025."
Alison Knowles lived and worked in a SoHo studio loft since the early 1970s. She enacted and documented The Identical Lunch ritual, eating a tuna fish sandwich on wheat toast with lettuce and butter and recording the practice in Journal of the Identical Lunch (1971) after beginning the routine in 1967. She discarded work she deemed finished, including early Abstract Expressionist paintings made under Adolph Gottlieb at the Pratt Institute in the mid-1950s, while preserving boxes of papers, reviews, letters, and photographs. She championed intermedia that dissolved boundaries between art, poetry, and music, engaged patiently and generously in extended conversations about avant-garde work, and remained warm and spirited until her passing on October 29, 2025.
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