Allan Kaprow

Recognized as the father of Happenings, American artist Allan Kaprow, was also a cultural critic and lifelong educator who steered numerous generations of students into a style of art making that was simultaneously cerebral, utopian, political, improvisational, and infused with wit. After an early career as a painter under the tutelage of Hans Hoffmann, Kaprow moved during the late 1950s and 1960s toward impermanent interactive Environments and participatory events, which often featured ordinary activities taking place in everyday spaces.

Kaprow wrote that the line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible, implicitly questioning the way in which the art of the museums and market is produced and consumed.

In considering the theme of Touched, Kaprow’s Happenings were events intrinsically linked to the public domain, and their physicality was important too when considering how art may touch the city. An event that causes change: that produces a chain-reaction of other events.

Kaprow’s work has been exhibited and performed extensively in the United States and internationally. It is this legacy and the possibility of personal re-inventions of his work that the artists of the Càtedra Arte de Conducta and Tania Bruguera are asked to consider. Each week throughout the biennial, two artists from the Càtedra re-invented a written score from Kaprow’s archive.

The following works will be reinvented: Self Service (1966); Transfer (1968); Round Trip (1968); Six Ordinary Happenings: Shape and Charity (1969); Words (1962); Time Pieces (1973); Affect (1974); Match (1975); Satisfaction (1976); Mediation1, (zazen) (1981); Office Boy (1987).

Reinventions, 2010
A series of happenings by various artists
Exhibited at 52 Renshaw Street