View source for Allan Kaprow

{{Short description|American performance artist, installation artist, painter (1927–2006)}}
{{Infobox artist
| name          = Allan Kaprow
| image         = Allan Kaprow.jpg
| caption       = Kaprow in 1973
| image_size    = 
| birth_name    =
| birth_date    = {{birth date |1927|8|23}}
| birth_place   = [[Atlantic City, New Jersey]], US
| death_date    = {{death date and age |2006|4|5|1927|8|23}}
| death_place   = [[Encinitas, California]], US
| known_for     = [[Installation art]], Painting
| training      = [[Columbia University]]<br/>[[New York University]]
| movement      = [[Fluxus]]
| notable_works = Happenings
| patrons       =
| awards        =
| website       = {{URL|http://allankaprow.com}}
}}

'''Allan Kaprow''' (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American performance artist, installation artist, painter, and [[Assemblage (art)|assemblagist]] .  He helped to develop the "[[Installation art|Environment]]" and "[[Happening]]" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings — some 200 of them — evolved over the years. Eventually Kaprow shifted his practice into what he called "Activities", intimately scaled pieces for one or several [[actors|players]], devoted to the study of normal human activity in a way congruent to ordinary life. [[Fluxus]], [[performance art]], and [[installation art]] were, in turn, influenced by his work.

==Academic career==

=== Studies===
Because of a chronic illness Kaprow was forced to move from New York to Tucson, Arizona.<ref>{{cite web|title=Allan Kaprow|url=https://www.theartstory.org/artist/kaprow-allan/|access-date=3 August 2022}}</ref> He began his early education in Tucson where he attended boarding school.
Later he would attend the [[The High School of Music and Art|High School of Music and Art]] in New York where his fellow students were the artists [[Wolf Kahn]], Rachel Rosenthal and the future New York gallerist Virginia Zabriskie.
As an undergraduate at [[New York University]], Kaprow was influenced by [[John Dewey]]'s book ''[[Art as Experience]]''.<ref name=Happenings>{{Cite news
 | last =Cotter
 | first =Holland
 | date =April 10, 2006
 | title =Allan Kaprow, Creator of Artistic 'Happenings,' Dies at 78
 | periodical =The New York Times
 | url =https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/arts/design/10kaprow.html?scp=2&sq=Allan+Kaprow&st=nyt
 | access-date =2008-04-29
 }}</ref> He studied in the arts and [[philosophy]] as a graduate student. He received his [[Master of Arts|MA]] degree from [[Columbia University]] in art history. He started in the [[Hans Hofmann]] School of Fine Arts in 1947. It was here that he started with a style of [[action painting]], which greatly influenced his Happenings pieces in years to come. He went on to study composition with [[John Cage]] in his class at the [[New School for Social Research]], painting with Hans Hofmann, and art history with [[Meyer Schapiro]]. Kaprow started his studio career as a painter, and later co-founded [[Tenth Street galleries|the Hansa]] and [[Tenth Street galleries|Reuben Galleries]] in New York and became the director of the Judson Gallery.{{citation needed|date=September 2015}} With John Cage's influence, he became less and less focused on the product of painting, and instead on the action.{{citation needed|date=September 2015}}

===Teaching===
Kaprow began teaching at [[Rutgers University]] in 1953. While there, he helped to create what would eventually become one branch of the Fluxus group, along with professors [[Robert Watts (artist)|Robert Watts]], [[Geoffrey Hendricks]] and [[Roy Lichtenstein]], artists [[George Brecht]] and [[George Segal (artist)|George Segal]], and undergraduates [[Lucas Samaras]] and [[Robert Whitman]].<ref name=Rutgers>{{Cite web | last =Trevor | first =Greg | title =Rutgers and the Avant-Garde | publisher =Rutgers Focus | url =http://ur.rutgers.edu/focus/article/Rutgers%20and%20the%20avant-garde/482/ | access-date =2008-05-05 | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20060913012037/http://ur.rutgers.edu/focus/article/Rutgers%20and%20the%20avant-garde/482/ | archive-date =2006-09-13 | url-status =dead }}</ref> Through a long teaching career, he taught at Rutgers until 1961,<ref name=Askart>{{Cite web | last =Kaprow | first =Allan | title = Allan Kaprow - Artist, Art - Allan Kaprow | url=http://www.askart.com/askart/k/allan_kaprow/allan_kaprow.aspx | access-date =2010-05-04}}</ref> [[Pratt Institute]] from 1960 to 1961, the [[State University of New York at Stony Brook]] from 1961 to 1966, and the [[California Institute of the Arts]] from 1966 to 1974, before serving as a full-time faculty member at the [[University of California, San Diego]], where he taught from 1974 to 1993.<ref name="LATimes Obit">{{cite news|last1=Rourke|first1=Mary|title=Allan Kaprow, 79; Artist's 'Happenings' Broke New Ground in Expression|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-apr-08-me-kaprow8-story.html|access-date=14 September 2015|work=Los Angeles Times|date=8 April 2006}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://visarts.ucsd.edu/node/view/491/55 |title=UCSD - VisArts - |access-date=2011-01-11 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110407080945/http://visarts.ucsd.edu/node/view/491/55 |archive-date=2011-04-07 }}</ref>

==Happenings==

In 1958, Kaprow published the essay "The Legacy of [[Jackson Pollock]]".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Kaprow |first1=Allan |title=The Legacy of Jackson Pollock |url=http://www.artnews.com/2018/02/09/archives-allan-kaprow-legacy-jackson-pollock-1958/ |website=artnews.com |date=9 February 2018 |access-date=23 November 2018}}</ref>  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.<ref name="Allan Kaprow | Chronology">{{cite web |url=http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/flux_files/kaprow_chronology.html |title= Fluxus & Happening -- Allan Kaprow &#124; Chronology |access-date=2010-05-04 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100608100416/http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/flux_files/kaprow_chronology.html| archive-date= 8 June 2010 | url-status= live}}</ref>

The "Happenings" first started as tightly scripted events, in which the audience and performers followed cues to experience the art.<ref name=Happenings /> To Kaprow, a Happening was "A game, an adventure, a number of activities engaged in by participants for the sake of playing." Furthermore, Kaprow says that the Happenings were "events that, put simply, happen."<!-- needs citation --> There was no structured beginning, middle, or end, and there was no distinction or hierarchy between artist and viewer. It was the viewer's reaction that decided the art piece, making each Happening a unique experience that cannot be replicated. It is participatory and [[interactive]], with the goal of tearing down the wall a.k.a. "[[the fourth wall]]" between artist and observers, so observers are not just "reading" the piece, but also interacting with it, becoming part of 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.<ref name=Happenings />  His work evolved, and became less scripted and incorporated more everyday activities.<ref>[[Gary Botting]], "Happenings", in ''The Theatre of Protest in America'' (Edmonton: Harden House, 1972) 13-17</ref> 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."<ref>Botting, "Happenings",15</ref> 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."<ref>Botting, ''Happenings'', p. 15</ref>  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."<ref name=JCA>{{cite web |url=http://www.jca-online.com/kaprow.html |title= Allan Kaprow |access-date=2008-04-28 |publisher=Journal of Contemporary Art, Inc.| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080514110651/http://www.jca-online.com/kaprow.html| archive-date= 14 May 2008 | url-status= live}}</ref> He rarely recorded his Happenings which made them a one time occurrence.<ref name ="ART IN REVIEW">{{Cite news
 | last =Cotter
 | first =Holland
 | date =November 19, 1999
 | title =ART IN REVIEW; Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts -- 'Experiments in the Everyday'
 | periodical =The New York Times
 | url =https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E5D6173CF93AA25752C1A96F958260&fta=y
 | access-date =2008-04-29
 }}</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Twemlow|first=Alice|date=2009|title=I can't talk to you if you say that: An ideological collision at the International Design Conference at Aspen, 1970|journal=Design and Culture|volume=1|issue=1|pages=23–49|doi=10.2752/175470709787375832|s2cid=144980887}}</ref>

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<!-- needs citation -->.  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 work. 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." [http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-15247975/essays-blurring-art-and.html] There have been recreations of his pieces, such as [http://www.getty.edu/visit/events/overflow.html "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''.<ref>[http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/ada/images/2/''ADA - Aktionen der Avantgarde'', 1973]</ref>

In 2014 [http://www.thisisnotatheatrecompany.com 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 [[Professor Emeritus]] in the [[Visual Arts]] Department of the [[University of California, San Diego]]. Kaprow is also known for the idea of "un-art", found in his essays [http://readingbetween.org/artwhichcantbeart.pdf] "Art Which Can't Be Art" and "The Education of the Un-Artist."

Many well-known artists, for example, [[Claes Oldenburg]], cite him as an influence on their work.{{citation needed|date=August 2022}}

==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.
<ref>{{Cite web
 | last =Paul
 | first =J.
 | date = 2001
 | title = INVENTORY OF THE ALLAN KAPROW PAPERS, 1940-1997
 | url = http://www.oac.cdlib.org/data/13030/dv/tf9d5nb3dv/files/tf9d5nb3dv.pdf
 | access-date = 2010-05-05
 }}</ref>

==Recognition==
In 2013, Dale Eisinger of [[Complex (magazine)|''Complex'']] ranked ''Yard'' (1961) sixth in his list of the greatest performance art works, writing, "His first happenings engaged the audience in overwhelming, often playful ways. ''Yard'' is perhaps the most significant of these early works".<ref>{{Cite web|last=Eisinger|first=Dale|date=2013-04-09|title=The 25 Best Performance Art Pieces of All Time|url=https://www.complex.com/style/2013/04/the-25-best-performance-art-pieces-of-all-time/|url-status=live|access-date=2021-02-28|website=Complex|language=en|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140730013607/http://www.complex.com:80/style/2013/04/the-25-best-performance-art-pieces-of-all-time/ |archive-date=2014-07-30 }}</ref>

== See also ==
{{Portal|Biography|Visual arts}}
*[[Fluxus]]
*[[Installation art]]
*[[Gutai group]]
*[[Tenth street galleries]]
*[[Dada]]
*[[Performance Art]]
*[[Improv Everywhere]]
*[[New Media Art]]
*[[Fluxus at Rutgers University]]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20140303100529/http://fundaciotapies.org/site/spip.php?article7818 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.
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[https://www.archivioconz.com/collection/artists/allan-kaprow/ Archivio Conz]
*[http://www.ubu.com/sound/kaprow.html UBU Sound entry page for Allan Kaprow]
*[http://www.ubu.com/historical/kaprow/index.html UBU Historical entry page for Allan Kaprow]
*[http://www.allankaprow.com Official Allan Kaprow website ]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20151120004527/http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/performance-art-101-happening-allan-kaprow "Performance Art 101: The Happening, Allan Kaprow" blog entry at TATE's website]
*[https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/arts/design/10kaprow.html?_r=0 "Allan Kaprow, Creator of Artistic 'Happenings,' Dies at 78" ''The New York Times'' obituary]
* {{wikiquote-inline}}
* {{wikiversity inline|Performance art}}
* Finding Aid for [[hdl:10020/cifa980063|Allan Kaprow papers]], Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Accession No. 980063.

{{Performance art}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaprow, Allan}}
[[Category:1927 births]]
[[Category:2006 deaths]]
[[Category:American installation artists]]
[[Category:American conceptual artists]]
[[Category:American performance artists]]
[[Category:Performance art in Los Angeles]]
[[Category:American postmodern artists]]
[[Category:Jewish American artists]]
[[Category:Columbia University alumni]]
[[Category:The High School of Music & Art alumni]]
[[Category:20th-century American Jews]]
[[Category:21st-century American Jews]]