Allan Kaprow (1927)
United States
Biography :
"In 1942, he studied at the High School of Music and Art in New York, then art history and philosophy at New York University. In 1947 he began taking classes with Hans Hofman at the School of Fine Arts in New York where he practiced “Action Painting” which would leave traces a few years later in his performances. Then continued at Columbia University to study art history with Meyer Shapiro. An abstract painter in his early days, he founded the Hansa Galery in 1952 and taught from 1953 to 1961 at Rutgers University. Following John Cage's teaching in experimental music, which he received at the New School for Social Research from 1957 to 1958, he created environments which sometimes required spectator participation. Finally the term eHappeninge appears in the article The Legacy of Jackson Pollock (1958), which he defines as “an assemblage of events performed or perceived, invented or ordinary, in various times and places which occur (happening) according to a plan, but without rehearsal or audience”; it’s art that seems closest to life. At the 1959 inauguration of the Reuben Gallery, he presented 18 Happenings in 6 Parts: he gave participants a sheet of instructions to perform a set of actions such as crawling on the floor, sitting on a chair or shout a political slogan. He tries to abolish the boundary between the performers and the audience. In 1961, he taught at New York University. In 1964, he organized the performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Original at Judson Hall which included artists Nam June Paik, Moorman, Allen Ginsberg, Jackson Mac Low and many others. Publishes Assemblage, Environments and Happenings, in 1966, which brings together his theories on new artistic practices and also relates the research of Robert Rauschenberg, Jim Dine and Claes Oldenburg or the Gutai group. He had a major influence on the Rutgers Group artists including George Brecht, Geoffrey Hendricks, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Watts. Until the end of the 60s, he carried out important happenings such as Fluids, which consisted of building a structure of blocks of ice intended to melt in direct sunlight. Then, he devotes himself to more intimate and discreet actions which he calls “activities”. In 1970 he participated in Fluxus & Happening at the Kunstverein in Cologne. He published The Education of Un-Artist in 1971, teaching from 1974 to 1993 at the University of California in San Diego. For Allan Kaprow “experimental art is the only form of art that affirms and denies art at the same time”."
(Source, website, Fondation du Doute)