Sᴇʟᴇᴄᴛᴇᴅ Aʀᴛᴡᴏʀᴋ: Aʟʟᴀɴ Kᴀᴘʀᴏᴡ, 18 Hᴀᴘᴘᴇɴɪɴɢs Iɴ 6 Pᴀʀᴛs, 1959

                52 - 56

            Aʟʟᴀɴ Kᴀᴘʀᴏᴡ

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            Early Career

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born in 1927, Atlantic City, New Jersey

attended boarding school in Tucson, Arizona

High School of Music and Art in New York

bachelor's degree from New York University

majors: philosophy, art history

received: 1949

studied at Hans Hofmann's private run painting
school during final year at NYU to learn Abstract
Expressionism methods

master's degree from Columbia University

major: art history

studying under: Meyer Schapiro

received: 1952

founded Hansa Gallery (artist' cooperative)
in 1952

took teaching position at Rutger's University
in 1953

other schools he taught at:
State University of New York, Stony Brook
California Institute of the Arts
University of California, San Diego
where he retired in 1992

began making "action collages" in mid 1950s

worked quickly, applying paint to canvas with
gestural brushtrokes (like AbEx paintings)

used all kinds of quotidian detritus (everyday
debris): crumpled paper, aluminum foil, apples,
oranged, cardboard boxes

assemblages gave way in late 1950s to what he
called Environments: entire spaces filled with
objects that viewers would have to navigate
physically, often in a way that altered the arrange-
ment of the space

attended John Cage's weekly course in music
composition at the New School for Social
Research from 1957-1958

New school for Social research: haven for
progressive pedagogy, founded in New York
in 1919

fellow students include:
George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Jackson Mac
Low, La Monte Young
later associated with Fluxux movement

Cage used musical score as proxy for temporality,
repeatability, elements of chance through
audience participation

represented in 4'33"

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             Writing On
         Jackson Pollock

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Jackson Pollock: died in a car crash in 1956

developed radical new technique in 1947, dripping
paint on canvas laid on the ground

entirely abstract paintings shocked general public

drip paintings became one of the crowning achievements
of AbEx, emphasis on line, colour, and the canva
and paint itself as materials

performance of his process captures in still photo 
and film by Hans Namuth in 1950, broadcasted in 1951

critic Harold Rosenburg coined the term action painting
to describe Pollock & AbEx contemporaries

quote: "at a certain moment the canvas began to 
appear to one American painter after another as an
arena which to act rather than as a space which to 
reproduce, redesign, analyze, or 'express' an object
actual, or imagined. What was to go on the canvas 
was not a picture but an event."

Kaprow saw Pollock's work as "blurring edges between
his art and the world beyond," captivated by highly 
active process of art making

published an essay in 1958 titled "The Legacy of Jackson
Pollock"

quote: "Pollock...left us at the point where we must become
preoccupied with and even dazzled by the space and objects
of our everyday life, either our bodies, clothes, rooms, or,
if need be, the vastness of Forty-Second Street." 

quote: "Young artists of today need no longer say 'I am a 
painter' or 'a poet' or 'a dancer.' They are simply 'artists.'
All of life will be open to them. They will discover out of 
ordinary things the meaning of ordinariness. They will not try 
to make them extraordinary but will only state their real
meaning. But out of nothing they will devise the
extraordinary and then maybe nothingness as well.
People will be delighted or horrified, critics will be confused
or amused, but these, I am certain, will be the alchemies
of the 1960s."

accurately predicted 60s practices that blend art and life

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          18 Happenings
      In 6 Parts: Analysis

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in October 1959, Kaprow's ideas coalesced in an event

at newly founded Reuben Gallery (empty loft on Fourth

Avenue in Manhattan's East Village.

titled 18 Happenings in 6 Parts

staged in 3 separate spaces created with temporary

partitions made of wood and sheets of plastic & canvas

over course of 1 hour, 3 men & 3 women move through

various spaces, executing range of simultaneous actions

dictated by Kaprow's score

attendees instructed to move from room to room during

selected intermissions, engaging the whole event space

critic Susan Sontag wrote in an essay that Happenings 

have no "climax or consummation" compared them to

 modernist works of art

argued such events have autonomous totality, primary

concern is engagement with materials

treatment of persons as material objects, not characters

one important precursor was an event titled Theater
Piece No.1, which took place at Black Mountain
College in North Carolina in 1952

Black Mountain attracted avant garde artists from
Europe & America to teach courses and engage in
experimental activities

John Cage made visits beginning in 1948, was inspired 
by series of all white paintings Robert Rauschenberg
was making there

Theater Piece No.1 by John Cage - composer stood
on a ladder in center of space while artists, musicians,
dancers moved around the space where one of 
Rauschenberg's white paintings was included as 
a part of a minimal set design

considered by many to be the 1st Happening

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      Kaprow's Influence

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Happenings began in 1958 and solidified as an art

form in 1962

Kaprow's fellow artists, including Claes Oldenburg

and Jim Dine, eventually shifted to pop art, while

Kaprow stayed

in late 1960s, he moved away from heavily scripted

Happenings to pieces based on short instructions

documented carrying out of these instructions with

deadpan black & white photographs, strategy 

used by Conceptual artists

events produced nothing for sell, deliberately

resisted art market

difficult to assimilate into canon of art history 

because they were rarely well documented

18 Happenings in 6 Parts exists today in form

of written accounts, photos, and Kaprow's 

written score

important for several movements that aimed to

bring art and daily life together, from Pop art to

Land art, also performance art