Kaprow Happenings Analysis
“A happening is for those who happen in this world, for those who don’t want to stand off and just look. If you happen, you can’t be outside peeking in. You’ve got to be involved physically” (Kaprow, , )Allan Kaprow acted as central figure in the repositioning the art world of 1960’s, his Happenings were a form of impulsive, chance driven, non-linear action, that revolutionized performance art. Although Kaprow began as a painter, his curiosity shifted in the mid 1950’s to the theoretical, based on the altering concepts of space introspectively experienced by the beholder. He was among many artist and critics who fixated on an intellectual, theorized view on art, renouncing abstract expressionism works and instead looking on the act of their production.
The term “Happenings” first appeared in 1958, in an article by Kaprow, this specifically referred to the performance work of the Vanguard within the late 1950’s, early 1960’s. Where boundaries were broken between various practices and collaged into celebratory spaces as, “quasi- theatrical event, creating indistinct boundaries within the separate arts”, a then- potential art form, (Rodenbeck 2011, p. 9). …show more content…
This article was drafted as a homage to Jackson Pollock, The legacy of Jackson Pollock was intended as a provocation; Kaprow questioned, what “had Pollock, the silent colossus of American modernism, bequeathed to the avant-garde artist?”, (Rodenbeck 2011, p. 10). The answer Kaprow composed was the ending of painting as such, as bound by pigment, he stated that “Pollock was an action painter, and his legacy was not painting but action”, (Rodenbeck 2011, p. 9). From this a new medium evolved, which occupied the specific substance of sight, sound, movements, people, odours, touch a dilation of the end of painting, into the world we have always had about us but ignored.
Action collages were fabricated by Kaprow in 1956, composed of cut up sections of his own paintings, scraps of cardboard, sheets of foil, torn paper, all collaged on to a canvas in an impulsive manner of action painting, formed of discarded matter, (Kelley 2004, p.13). This intensely physical activity of subjoining had replenished the act of painting. Collage was key for Kaprow, as it did not contribute to no obvious aesthetic direction, he had utilised collage as a method of gathering and composing. Allowing him to systematize heterogeneous materials for example sound, textures, odours; abutments that had no connection with aesthetic continuity and everything to do with the daily experience of life. This type of collage detached Kaprow from needing to connect parts within a piece in relation to a whole. These key sections including materials, objects and processes could be rough and raw as they were, helping to shift Kaprow’s aesthetic focus from the internal conformity of an artwork resonance in the world. Questions of value were abandoned and replaced with more urgent questions such as, what is the thing as such? And what does the movement consist of? (Kelley 2004, p.14).
Following the collages, assemblages were created which also were constructed of reused matter and coarser materials. Pictorial convention no longer restrained them, they were composed with matter of an everyday sort. Kaprow then went on to introducing flashing lights and further audible elements, eventually accumulating the sensory elements he would later work with in the following years, (Kelley 2004, p.13). By 1957 the assemblages bridged the distance of Kaprows background as a painter and the Hapener he would soon become. One piece of work formed was Rearrangeable Panels in 1957, perhaps one of his most infamous assemblages, that had the ability to be arranged in different configuration by the artist but also by curators or collectors. Assemblages were to be handled and experienced, In Kaprows opinion, allowing the members of the audience to interact with the environment. Happenings were no longer confined to the museum or gallery, and was an event involving spectator participation (Kelley 2004, p.15). This was an early indication of a central principle of Kaprows future work. These freestanding panels were not in the traditional nature of sculpture however with a pictorial tradition, they activated the awareness of the viewer to the environment surrounding it, as if the “aura of art had spilled beyond the object and in to the room around it”, eventually leading Kaprow to the insight that the room itself could be an assemblage,” a work of art the viewer would be in, not just near, (Rodenbeck 2011, p. 9). Performers were encouraged by Kaprow and others to capitalize on unexpected occurrences while re-enacting visions established on everyday life, this lies in a pre-conceived structure that implies basic universal themes and connotations. An area of aesthetic is thus constructed that is comparable to life, combining artfully materials and shared properties with events that exist outside the definitions of art. (Kaprow, 1996)
Kaprow attended a class lead by John cage, which was a weekly seminar in which presentations of student scores, also work by cage and other guest composers which initiated discussion on topics on the nature of boredom.
Cage was highly influential on Kaprows progression as an artist, cage was a dominant influence in the principle to regards of the practice of chance and the equation of noise with music. Kaprow was interested in following these ideas, well beyond the current art boundaries into the events of everyday life, (Kelley 2004, p.19). Kaprow methodically developed this approach over time, that ultimately distinguished him for his mentor. “He exchanged the street for the concert hall, the chance encounter for the performance event, everyday experience for the creation of art.” (Kelley 2004,
p.17).
“Happening” was deliberately vague term, kaprow chose this in order to avoid associations with the action art that was appearing within theatre, they have been served with curious addenda to the early 1960’s, inhabiting the problematic space between painting and theatre, between art and life, formulated in Kaprow’s article. (Pp9 – radical prototypes.) This can be systematically thought of as the first American Happening, a “seminal moment in the history of Avant- Garde” , (Kelley 2004, p.30). Eighteen part in six happenings seemed to some of those in attendance like the end of art, however others believed that this may be the future. Kaprow had been preparing this composition of Happenings for months, the score for this Happening was profusely ambitious than the previous events. Whereas he regarded the previous scores as “notes on something”, a component of a continuation of ideas concerning aleatory art, the score developed for eighteen Happenings was coordinated attempt to conceive an occurrence that was beginning to develop in his mind as a “happening” for lack of a better term,(Kelley 2004, p.31).
October 1959, in the Reuben Gallery, New York Kaprow at the age of thirty presented Eighteen Happenings in six parts, a intricate theatrical piece involving coloured lights, “recorded and live sounds, various odours, spoken words, and the performance of certain routine like actions in three open, plastic- sheeted, semi- transparent cubicles” (Kelley 2004, p.31). Among with a majority art- world audience moved on a cue. Kaprow wanted to discover the possibilities if conditions were crafted correctly for a Happening, nevertheless he wanted to uncover whether this radical art could exist in the art world. Kaprow sensed into the everyday where commonplace materials, process and occurrences that would raise fascinating also possibly raising philosophical questions about the existing boundaries between life and art. From the moment at Kaprows exhibition at the Hansa Gallery, possibly later back to the days in Hans Hoffman’s class in the late 1940’s, kaprow had been,” methodically to infuse the heavy-handed, mythically weighted conventions of post-war American art with a sense of the physical, prosaic, extemporaneous quality of contemporary urban experience”. , (Kelley 2004, p.29).
The physical surroundings for Eighteen Happenings combined props that had been acquired and made or the event, this included tables, an orange squeezer, a muslin panel set in to the plastic wall, wooden block and many more. Members of the audience were led to the first or second room. The first part began with a single note from a bell, pursued by loud, nonharmonic electronic sounds, the lights were then dimmed. As the audience members entered the second floor space of the Reuben Gallery, and received a programme of the events ahead. The audience members were also given instructions, on note cards Kaprow wrote, “The performance is divided into six parts. Each part contains three Happenings which occur at once. The beginning and end of each will be signalled by a bell. At the of the performance two strokes of the ell will be heard…… You have been given three cards. Be seated as they instruct you”,(Kelley 2004, p.24). The audience members were instructed that they would be asked to be move on cue through the three rooms which the “happenings” would take place, and that there would be no applause. For the duration of ninety minutes, the eighteen simultaneous events that contained painters painting on muslin panel, performers recreating basic movements form a score, also reading from placards, various instruments being played. The Happening then ended with performers citing single-syllable words, as four scrolls fell from a horizontal bar, then ending with a bell ringing twice.
As Kaprow discusses in his essay on art and life, that we do not come to look at his exhibition, we simply enter not conscious of the fact that we become a part of what surrounds us passively or actively in much the same way that we have moved out of the totality or our home where we also played a part.
As Kaprow discusses that when he communicates about activities and context that don’t suggest art, he cites that he doesn’t necessarily mean an event such as brushing his teeth which is then placed in a conventional art context, alike Duchamp. That procedure, whereby an art-identifying structure for example a gallery negotiates “art value” or “art discourse” on an everyday appropriated object, forcing questioning assumptions about creativity, individuality, and the value of high art itself. Eventually non-art became trivialized as it was consistently becoming exhibited. “But why should we want to estheticize “anything”? All the irony was lost in those presentations, the provocative questions forgotten”, (Kaprow, 1986). Kaprow questions here that any one thing can be estheticized if it’s given the correct environment. He then goes one to say that to go on producing art in this way seemed to unproductive.
Happenings invite others to leave aside everything, and engage wholly in this crossing boundary between art and life. Therefore, a Happening is rough, as Kaprow says they can often feel “dirty” and organic, “everything, including the visitors, can grow a little in such circumstances”. “A Happening is generated in action by a head full of ideas or a flimsy jotted-down score of root directions.”, (Kelley 2004, p.19). Those who create happenings as Kaprow says are living out the purest melodrama, as the event manifests the myth of non-success as a Happening are unable to be sold, they can only be sustained. Due to their intimate and ephemeral nature, only a handful of people can experience them, leaving them to be isolated from any other classical art form. The profuseness of what these artists create are unforeseen, (Kelley 2004, p.25). However ephemeral Happenings may seem at an art historical remove, the work was sensually and physically present in the time of their enactment. Kaprow’s events were concrete, I the most possible elusive way, they were composed of people’s experiences.
The term “Happenings” first appeared in 1958, in an article by Kaprow, this specifically referred to the performance work of the Vanguard within the late 1950’s, early 1960’s. Where boundaries were broken between various practices and collaged into celebratory spaces as, “quasi- theatrical event, creating indistinct boundaries within the separate arts”, a then- potential art form, (Rodenbeck 2011, p. 9). …show more content…
This article was drafted as a homage to Jackson Pollock, The legacy of Jackson Pollock was intended as a provocation; Kaprow questioned, what “had Pollock, the silent colossus of American modernism, bequeathed to the avant-garde artist?”, (Rodenbeck 2011, p. 10). The answer Kaprow composed was the ending of painting as such, as bound by pigment, he stated that “Pollock was an action painter, and his legacy was not painting but action”, (Rodenbeck 2011, p. 9). From this a new medium evolved, which occupied the specific substance of sight, sound, movements, people, odours, touch a dilation of the end of painting, into the world we have always had about us but ignored.
Action collages were fabricated by Kaprow in 1956, composed of cut up sections of his own paintings, scraps of cardboard, sheets of foil, torn paper, all collaged on to a canvas in an impulsive manner of action painting, formed of discarded matter, (Kelley 2004, p.13). This intensely physical activity of subjoining had replenished the act of painting. Collage was key for Kaprow, as it did not contribute to no obvious aesthetic direction, he had utilised collage as a method of gathering and composing. Allowing him to systematize heterogeneous materials for example sound, textures, odours; abutments that had no connection with aesthetic continuity and everything to do with the daily experience of life. This type of collage detached Kaprow from needing to connect parts within a piece in relation to a whole. These key sections including materials, objects and processes could be rough and raw as they were, helping to shift Kaprow’s aesthetic focus from the internal conformity of an artwork resonance in the world. Questions of value were abandoned and replaced with more urgent questions such as, what is the thing as such? And what does the movement consist of? (Kelley 2004, p.14).
Following the collages, assemblages were created which also were constructed of reused matter and coarser materials. Pictorial convention no longer restrained them, they were composed with matter of an everyday sort. Kaprow then went on to introducing flashing lights and further audible elements, eventually accumulating the sensory elements he would later work with in the following years, (Kelley 2004, p.13). By 1957 the assemblages bridged the distance of Kaprows background as a painter and the Hapener he would soon become. One piece of work formed was Rearrangeable Panels in 1957, perhaps one of his most infamous assemblages, that had the ability to be arranged in different configuration by the artist but also by curators or collectors. Assemblages were to be handled and experienced, In Kaprows opinion, allowing the members of the audience to interact with the environment. Happenings were no longer confined to the museum or gallery, and was an event involving spectator participation (Kelley 2004, p.15). This was an early indication of a central principle of Kaprows future work. These freestanding panels were not in the traditional nature of sculpture however with a pictorial tradition, they activated the awareness of the viewer to the environment surrounding it, as if the “aura of art had spilled beyond the object and in to the room around it”, eventually leading Kaprow to the insight that the room itself could be an assemblage,” a work of art the viewer would be in, not just near, (Rodenbeck 2011, p. 9). Performers were encouraged by Kaprow and others to capitalize on unexpected occurrences while re-enacting visions established on everyday life, this lies in a pre-conceived structure that implies basic universal themes and connotations. An area of aesthetic is thus constructed that is comparable to life, combining artfully materials and shared properties with events that exist outside the definitions of art. (Kaprow, 1996)
Kaprow attended a class lead by John cage, which was a weekly seminar in which presentations of student scores, also work by cage and other guest composers which initiated discussion on topics on the nature of boredom.
Cage was highly influential on Kaprows progression as an artist, cage was a dominant influence in the principle to regards of the practice of chance and the equation of noise with music. Kaprow was interested in following these ideas, well beyond the current art boundaries into the events of everyday life, (Kelley 2004, p.19). Kaprow methodically developed this approach over time, that ultimately distinguished him for his mentor. “He exchanged the street for the concert hall, the chance encounter for the performance event, everyday experience for the creation of art.” (Kelley 2004,
p.17).
“Happening” was deliberately vague term, kaprow chose this in order to avoid associations with the action art that was appearing within theatre, they have been served with curious addenda to the early 1960’s, inhabiting the problematic space between painting and theatre, between art and life, formulated in Kaprow’s article. (Pp9 – radical prototypes.) This can be systematically thought of as the first American Happening, a “seminal moment in the history of Avant- Garde” , (Kelley 2004, p.30). Eighteen part in six happenings seemed to some of those in attendance like the end of art, however others believed that this may be the future. Kaprow had been preparing this composition of Happenings for months, the score for this Happening was profusely ambitious than the previous events. Whereas he regarded the previous scores as “notes on something”, a component of a continuation of ideas concerning aleatory art, the score developed for eighteen Happenings was coordinated attempt to conceive an occurrence that was beginning to develop in his mind as a “happening” for lack of a better term,(Kelley 2004, p.31).
October 1959, in the Reuben Gallery, New York Kaprow at the age of thirty presented Eighteen Happenings in six parts, a intricate theatrical piece involving coloured lights, “recorded and live sounds, various odours, spoken words, and the performance of certain routine like actions in three open, plastic- sheeted, semi- transparent cubicles” (Kelley 2004, p.31). Among with a majority art- world audience moved on a cue. Kaprow wanted to discover the possibilities if conditions were crafted correctly for a Happening, nevertheless he wanted to uncover whether this radical art could exist in the art world. Kaprow sensed into the everyday where commonplace materials, process and occurrences that would raise fascinating also possibly raising philosophical questions about the existing boundaries between life and art. From the moment at Kaprows exhibition at the Hansa Gallery, possibly later back to the days in Hans Hoffman’s class in the late 1940’s, kaprow had been,” methodically to infuse the heavy-handed, mythically weighted conventions of post-war American art with a sense of the physical, prosaic, extemporaneous quality of contemporary urban experience”. , (Kelley 2004, p.29).
The physical surroundings for Eighteen Happenings combined props that had been acquired and made or the event, this included tables, an orange squeezer, a muslin panel set in to the plastic wall, wooden block and many more. Members of the audience were led to the first or second room. The first part began with a single note from a bell, pursued by loud, nonharmonic electronic sounds, the lights were then dimmed. As the audience members entered the second floor space of the Reuben Gallery, and received a programme of the events ahead. The audience members were also given instructions, on note cards Kaprow wrote, “The performance is divided into six parts. Each part contains three Happenings which occur at once. The beginning and end of each will be signalled by a bell. At the of the performance two strokes of the ell will be heard…… You have been given three cards. Be seated as they instruct you”,(Kelley 2004, p.24). The audience members were instructed that they would be asked to be move on cue through the three rooms which the “happenings” would take place, and that there would be no applause. For the duration of ninety minutes, the eighteen simultaneous events that contained painters painting on muslin panel, performers recreating basic movements form a score, also reading from placards, various instruments being played. The Happening then ended with performers citing single-syllable words, as four scrolls fell from a horizontal bar, then ending with a bell ringing twice.
As Kaprow discusses in his essay on art and life, that we do not come to look at his exhibition, we simply enter not conscious of the fact that we become a part of what surrounds us passively or actively in much the same way that we have moved out of the totality or our home where we also played a part.
As Kaprow discusses that when he communicates about activities and context that don’t suggest art, he cites that he doesn’t necessarily mean an event such as brushing his teeth which is then placed in a conventional art context, alike Duchamp. That procedure, whereby an art-identifying structure for example a gallery negotiates “art value” or “art discourse” on an everyday appropriated object, forcing questioning assumptions about creativity, individuality, and the value of high art itself. Eventually non-art became trivialized as it was consistently becoming exhibited. “But why should we want to estheticize “anything”? All the irony was lost in those presentations, the provocative questions forgotten”, (Kaprow, 1986). Kaprow questions here that any one thing can be estheticized if it’s given the correct environment. He then goes one to say that to go on producing art in this way seemed to unproductive.
Happenings invite others to leave aside everything, and engage wholly in this crossing boundary between art and life. Therefore, a Happening is rough, as Kaprow says they can often feel “dirty” and organic, “everything, including the visitors, can grow a little in such circumstances”. “A Happening is generated in action by a head full of ideas or a flimsy jotted-down score of root directions.”, (Kelley 2004, p.19). Those who create happenings as Kaprow says are living out the purest melodrama, as the event manifests the myth of non-success as a Happening are unable to be sold, they can only be sustained. Due to their intimate and ephemeral nature, only a handful of people can experience them, leaving them to be isolated from any other classical art form. The profuseness of what these artists create are unforeseen, (Kelley 2004, p.25). However ephemeral Happenings may seem at an art historical remove, the work was sensually and physically present in the time of their enactment. Kaprow’s events were concrete, I the most possible elusive way, they were composed of people’s experiences.