Yoko Ono was already the most famous artist in the Fluxus art movement when she met John Lennon at her Fluxus exhibition entitled “Ceiling Painting (Yes).” We were told this by the trio calling themselves the Fluxus Brothers, who also performed one of her Fluxus art pieces – not the piece that won over the Beatle but an earlier one: “Wall Piece for Orchestra” (1962.) This consisted of two of the performers repeatedly hitting their heads against the wall.

This might seem to invite a snarky comment, but, no, that was not how I felt during “The Fluxus Brothers Present Good Art Bad Art,” which was presented for one night only at the second annual PhysFestNYC festival earlier this week. It was one of my favorite festival shows during this month of theater festivals, an hour of undeniable weirdness but also of history, humor and even, albeit obliquely, provocative cultural commentary. The Fluxus Brothers – actual brothers Mason Rosenthal and Benjamin Rosenthal, along with “Dada” Morgan FitzPatrick Andrews – functioned as the equivalent of a tribute band to the Fluxus art movement of the 1960’s and 70s, but also as straight-faced pranksters creating Fluxus-inspired pieces of their own, thus carrying on the tradition.

Andrews served as narrator/lecturer/historian, which provided some fascinating context but also made the Fluxus gags all the funnier, since the aim of Fluxus, like the Dada movement before it, was to pierce the pretentiousness of the conventional art world – and, by extension, confront the bourgeois world as a whole. So each unconventional “score” (in Fluxus lingo) had a formal-sounding title and provenance. In “Drip Music” by George Brecht (1959), one brother stood on a ladder pouring water into the horn of a saxophone held by the other. In “Solo for Rich Man” by George Maciunas (1962), Andrews threw some coins on the ground, then ripped up double-digit paper U.S. currency (which provoked more gasps than laughter.)  There were some deeply out-there, even uncomfortable pieces.  In “Bang,” one of the new Fluxus Brother pieces, Ben Rosenthal pointed his finger as if holding a gun and shouted “Bang” for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The precise time was an allusion to pre-Fluxus piece by John Cage that influenced the Fluxus movement, but the duration made the simple action increasingly disturbing.

There are two pieces I found particularly thought-provoking. The Brothers asked for audience members who had strong opinions about art to come up on stage. One of the Brothers held up a sign that said Good Art, the other Bad Art. Then the Brothers described a series of potential art pieces and asked the volunteers to line up either with the Good Art or the Bad Art sign for each one. One was “peeing on the American flag while whistling the Star-Spangled banner for five minutes.” The volunteers were evenly divided. But then the same piece but for one hour, and some switched sides; then the same for 24 hours (more switching); then for six years. The volunteers seemed in on an in-joke, but the exercise prompted a serious question: Does the duration of a work of art affect one’s view of its quality? This feels like a truth hiding in plain sight – hard to admit, but harder to deny.

Then the Brothers re-created the art work entitled “Comedian” by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, which sold at a Sotheby art auction in November for $6.2 million. It consists of a banana taped to a wall by silver duct tape. Reportedly meant as a comment — a la Dada and Fluxus – on the commodification of art, doesn’t it now embody the commodification of art? Is there any way to escape such commodification in a commodifying culture? In any case, Ben took the reproduction of “Comedian”  off the wall and ate it – both the banana and the duct tape.

PhysfestNYC runs through Sunday at the Stella Adler Center for the Arts.