19.10.20 Allan Kaprow and happenings
Happenings were ' artist-led events which aimed to blur the boundary between art and life' (Beaven, no date)
The phrase was coined by Allan Kaprow in New York in the late 50s and early 60s. He was 'less interested in the art object than in the way they were created: he was excited by the performative possibilities of painting' (ibid).
'In 1959 he presented 18 Happenings in 6 Parts at the Reuben Gallery in New York – the first opportunity for a wider audience to experience this sort of event. He chose the word happening to suggest ‘something spontaneous, something that just happens to happen’.
Despite their name, happenings were actually tightly planned and participative. Like the Black Mountain untitled event of 1952, the environments, actions, sound, light and the timing were all integral parts of 18 Happenings in 6 Parts. Rather than being passive observers, the audience were participants – invitations to the event said ‘you will become part of the happenings; you will simultaneously experience them' ...In many ways these events brought out the ideas of chance encounters, and of giving significance to everyday events. .... these participatory events blurred the line between what was life and what was art, what was an everyday movement and what was a performance. Kaprow said, ‘The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps as indistinct as possible’.
'Kaprow may have made the term, and the idea of blurring the boundary of art and life, popular but he was the first to admit that he wasn’t the only one or the first working in this way. The happening had its roots in Hugo Ball’s Dada Cabaret Voltaire, Surrealist performances and the Italian Futurists in the early years of the twentieth century. Creating art out of life was first proposed as the gesamstkunstwerk (total art work) by the composer Richard Wagner in the Art-Work of the Future in 1849-50.
In Tokyo, Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop), a collective of visual artists, composers, photographers, musicians, designers, writers and others were experimenting with cross-discipline presentations. Working between 1951 and 1958, Jikken Kobo members mixed dance, poetry reading, music, painting displays and architecture. From 1952, they used the term happyōkai (literally a recital), for all their events, regardless of the traditional art forms the events included.' (ibid.)
The phrase was coined by Allan Kaprow in New York in the late 50s and early 60s. He was 'less interested in the art object than in the way they were created: he was excited by the performative possibilities of painting' (ibid).
'In 1959 he presented 18 Happenings in 6 Parts at the Reuben Gallery in New York – the first opportunity for a wider audience to experience this sort of event. He chose the word happening to suggest ‘something spontaneous, something that just happens to happen’.
Despite their name, happenings were actually tightly planned and participative. Like the Black Mountain untitled event of 1952, the environments, actions, sound, light and the timing were all integral parts of 18 Happenings in 6 Parts. Rather than being passive observers, the audience were participants – invitations to the event said ‘you will become part of the happenings; you will simultaneously experience them' ...In many ways these events brought out the ideas of chance encounters, and of giving significance to everyday events. .... these participatory events blurred the line between what was life and what was art, what was an everyday movement and what was a performance. Kaprow said, ‘The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps as indistinct as possible’.
'Kaprow may have made the term, and the idea of blurring the boundary of art and life, popular but he was the first to admit that he wasn’t the only one or the first working in this way. The happening had its roots in Hugo Ball’s Dada Cabaret Voltaire, Surrealist performances and the Italian Futurists in the early years of the twentieth century. Creating art out of life was first proposed as the gesamstkunstwerk (total art work) by the composer Richard Wagner in the Art-Work of the Future in 1849-50.
In Tokyo, Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop), a collective of visual artists, composers, photographers, musicians, designers, writers and others were experimenting with cross-discipline presentations. Working between 1951 and 1958, Jikken Kobo members mixed dance, poetry reading, music, painting displays and architecture. From 1952, they used the term happyōkai (literally a recital), for all their events, regardless of the traditional art forms the events included.' (ibid.)
Beaven, K. (no date) Performance Art The Happening Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/h/happening/happening (Accessed: 19 October 2020) Tate (no date) Situationist International Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/situationist-international (Accessed: 19 October 2020)