Performance Artist – Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow

US Artist- Performance Art, Painting

Allan Kaprow was a pivotal figure in the shifting art world of the 1960s; his “happenings,” a form of spontaneous, non-linear action, revolutionized the practice of Performance Art. While Kaprow began as a painter, by the mid 1950s his interest turned to the theoretical, based primarily on the shifting concepts of space as subjectively experienced by the viewer. Kaprow emerged from the group of artists known as the Rutgers Group, based out of Rutgers University where Kaprow taught art history and studio art. Kaprow was among the many artists and critics who focused on an intellectual and theorized view of art, rejecting the monumental nature of Abstract Expressionist works and instead focusing on the act of their production. In particular, his influential essay, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” (1956), called for an end to craftsmanship and permanence in art and instead demanded that artists shift their attention to “non-concrete,” or ephemeral, modes of production. (The Art Story)

Kaprow’s happenings changed the definition of the art object. “Art” was no longer an object to be viewed hanging on a wall or set on a pedestal; rather, it could now be anything at all, including movement, sound, and even scent. Kaprow stated, “The everyday world is the most astonishing inspiration conceivable. A walk down 14^th Street is more amazing than any masterpiece of art.”

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