Daniel James
Ezra Maas [1] (1 January 1950) was a radical and visionary British-born artist [2] who was known for his extreme secrecy , questions surrounding his identity , and his international cult following [3] . His work was linked with multiple art movements including conceptual art , surrealism, Fluxus [4] , Neo-Dada, the avant-garde and transavantgarde , installation art , performance art , Oulipo , and multimedia art . He first became famous as a prodigy on the New York art scene in the late 1960s [5] with a ser
Maas was notoriously reclusive [8] ; few photographs of him have ever been published [9] , and rumours about his location and identity have circulated since the 1960s [10] . At the height of his fame, Maas never appeared in public [11] , even to attend his own openings and exhibitions. To this day, questions persist as to whether Ezra Maas was one person or a collective of artists using the name [12] . Despite this, Maas was a hugely influential figure among other artists [13] - often described as the artis
In 2018, British journalist Daniel James [17] published ‘The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas’ [18] , - a hugely ambitious and controversial biography of the artist, which was shortlisted for The Guardian’s ‘Not The Booker’ Prize in 2019 [19] . James’s ‘Unauthorised Biography’ reignited conspiracy theories about Maas’s real identity [20] and the alleged apocalyptic messages concealed within his radical artwork [21] , which brought together controversial ideas from science, religion, philosophy, literatur
Daniel James