Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | April 5, 2006 | (aged 78)
Education | Columbia University New York University |
Known for | Installation art, Painting |
Notable work | Happenings |
Movement | Fluxus |
Website | allankaprow |
Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American performance artist, installation artist, painter, and
Academic career
Studies
Because of a chronic illness Kaprow was forced to move from New York to Tucson, Arizona.[1] He began his early education in Tucson where he attended boarding school. Later he would attend the
Teaching
Kaprow began teaching at
Happenings
In 1958, Kaprow published the essay "The Legacy of Jackson Pollock".[7] In it he demands a "concrete art" made of everyday materials such as "paint, chairs, food, electric and neon lights, smoke, water, old socks, a dog, movies." In this particular text, he uses the term "happening" for the first time stating that craftsmanship and permanence should be forgotten and perishable materials should be used in art.[8]
The "Happenings" first started as tightly scripted events, in which the audience and performers followed cues to experience the art.
One such work, titled Eighteen Happenings in Six Parts, involved an audience moving together to experience elements such as a band playing toy instruments, a woman squeezing an orange, and painters painting.[2] His work evolved, and became less scripted and incorporated more everyday activities.[9] Another example of a Happening he created involved bringing people into a room containing a large abundance of ice cubes, which they had to touch, causing them to melt and bringing the piece full circle.
Kaprow's most famous happenings began around 1961 to 1962, when he would take students or friends out to a specific site to perform a small action. He gained significant attention in September 1962 for his Words performance at the Smolin Gallery. However, the ritualistic nature of his happenings is nowhere better illustrated than in Eat (1964), which took place in a cave with irregular floors criss-crossed with puddles and streams. As Canadian playwright Gary Botting described it, "The 'visitors' entered through an old door, and walked down a dark, narrow corridor and up steps to a platform illuminated by an ordinary light bulb. Girls offered red and white wine to each visitor. Apples and bunches of bananas dangled from the ceiling and a girl fried banana fritters on a hotplate. In a small cave, entered only by climbing a ladder, a performer cut, salted and distributed boiled potatoes. In a log hut, bread and jam were served. Bread was stuffed between the logs. The visitors could eat and drink at random for an hour. There was no dialogue other than that used in the interaction of the visitors with the performers."[10] Botting noted that Eat appealed to all the senses and superadded to that was the rhythmic, repeated ticking of metronomes set at the pace of a human heartbeat, simulating ritualistic drumming. Furthermore, "The 'visitors' were involved physically (by being required to walk, eat, drink, etc.), mentally (by being required to follow directions), emotionally (by the darkness and strangeness of the interior of the cave), and mystically (by the 'mystery' of what is beyond the walls of the hut or in the inner cave."[11] In short, Kaprow developed techniques to prompt a creative response from the audience, encouraging audience members to make their own connections between ideas and events. In his own words, "And the work itself, the action, the kind of participation, was as remote from anything artistic as the site was."[12] He rarely recorded his Happenings which made them a one time occurrence.[13]
At the 1971 International Design Conference at Aspen, Kaprow directed a happening called "Tag" on the Aspen Highlands ski lift which focused on one of the conference themes: "the technological revolution". Using five video cameras and monitors, he recorded people riding the ski lift and again as they watched themselves riding the ski lift on the monitors.[14]
Kaprow's work attempts to integrate art and life. Through Happenings, the separation between life, art, artist, and audience becomes blurred. The "Happening" allows the artist to experiment with body motion, recorded sounds, written and spoken texts, and even smells. One of his earliest "Happenings" was the "Happenings in the New York Scene," written in 1961 as the form was developing. Kaprow calls them unconventional theater pieces, even if they are rejected by "devotees" of theater because of their visual arts origins. These "Happenings" use disposable elements like cardboard or cans making it cheaper on Kaprow to be able to change up his art piece every time. The minute those elements break down, he can get more disposable materials together and produce another improvisational master piece. He points out that their presentations in lofts, stores, and basements widens the concept of theater by destroying the barrier between audience and play and "demonstrating the organic connection between art and its environment." [1] There have been recreations of his pieces, such as "Overflow", a tribute to the original 1967 "FLUIDS" Happening.
In 1973 Allan Kaprow performed with Jannis Kounellis, Wolf Vostell, Robert Filliou, and Mario Merz in Berlin at the ADA - Aktionen der Avantgarde.[15]
In 2014 This Is Not A Theatre Company restaged two of Allan Kaprow's Happenings in New York City as part of the exhibit "Allen Kaprow. Other Ways" at the Fundacio Antoni Tapies in Barcelona: Toothbrushing Piece ("performed privately with friends"), and Pose ("Carrying chairs through the city. Sitting down here and there. Photographed. Pix left on the spot. Going on").
He published extensively and was
Many well-known artists, for example, Claes Oldenburg, cite him as an influence on their work.[citation needed]
Published works
Assemblage, Environments and Happenings (1966) presented the work of like-minded artists through both photographs and critical essays, and is a standard text in the field of performance art. Kaprow's Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (1993), a collection of pieces written over four decades, has made his theories about the practice of art in the present day available to a new generation of artists and critics. [16]
Recognition
In 2013, Dale Eisinger of
See also
- Fluxus
- Installation art
- Gutai group
- Tenth street galleries
- Dada
- Performance Art
- Improv Everywhere
- New Media Art
- Fluxus at Rutgers University
- Exhibition 2014: Allan Kaprow. Other Ways | Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona
References
- Art News 60(3):36-39,58-62. 1961. Reprinted in Allan Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. Ed. Jeff Kelley. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
- Wardrip-Fruin, Noah & Montfort, Nick (2003). The New Media Reader. The MIT Press.
- ^ "Allan Kaprow". Retrieved 3 August 2022.
- ^ a b c Cotter, Holland (April 10, 2006). "Allan Kaprow, Creator of Artistic 'Happenings,' Dies at 78". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-04-29.
- ^ Trevor, Greg. "Rutgers and the Avant-Garde". Rutgers Focus. Archived from the original on 2006-09-13. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
- ^ Kaprow, Allan. "Allan Kaprow - Artist, Art - Allan Kaprow". Retrieved 2010-05-04.
- ^ Rourke, Mary (8 April 2006). "Allan Kaprow, 79; Artist's 'Happenings' Broke New Ground in Expression". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
- ^ "UCSD - VisArts -". Archived from the original on 2011-04-07. Retrieved 2011-01-11.
- ^ Kaprow, Allan (9 February 2018). "The Legacy of Jackson Pollock". artnews.com. Retrieved 23 November 2018.
- ^ "Fluxus & Happening -- Allan Kaprow | Chronology". Archived from the original on 8 June 2010. Retrieved 2010-05-04.
- ^ Gary Botting, "Happenings", in The Theatre of Protest in America (Edmonton: Harden House, 1972) 13-17
- ^ Botting, "Happenings",15
- ^ Botting, Happenings, p. 15
- ^ "Allan Kaprow". Journal of Contemporary Art, Inc. Archived from the original on 14 May 2008. Retrieved 2008-04-28.
- ^ Cotter, Holland (November 19, 1999). "ART IN REVIEW; Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts -- 'Experiments in the Everyday'". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-04-29.
- S2CID 144980887.
- ^ ADA - Aktionen der Avantgarde, 1973
- ^ Paul, J. (2001). "INVENTORY OF THE ALLAN KAPROW PAPERS, 1940-1997" (PDF). Retrieved 2010-05-05.
- ^ Eisinger, Dale (2013-04-09). "The 25 Best Performance Art Pieces of All Time". Complex. Archived from the original on 2014-07-30. Retrieved 2021-02-28.
External links
- Archivio Conz
- UBU Sound entry page for Allan Kaprow
- UBU Historical entry page for Allan Kaprow
- Official Allan Kaprow website
- "Performance Art 101: The Happening, Allan Kaprow" blog entry at TATE's website
- "Allan Kaprow, Creator of Artistic 'Happenings,' Dies at 78" The New York Times obituary
- Quotations related to Allan Kaprow at Wikiquote
- Learning materials related to Performance art at Wikiversity
- Finding Aid for Allan Kaprow papers, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Accession No. 980063.