Allan Kaprow
How To Make A Happening, 1966
How To Make A Happening, 1966
Cover: S/W, Photo: Sol Goldberg von Allan Kaprow's Happening "Household" an der Cornell University, 1964.
"In 1957 Allen Kaprow decided to try out the possibility that the ’action’ of Action Painting was a ritual act of creation, not just an incidental frenzy of movement that produced wild canvases. That decision effectively ended his growing career as a painter. Since then he has given to the world a word: the Happening. From Murray the K's radio program to the Revlon commercials, to peace marches and sit-ins, to the campaigns of politicians-that word seems to have satisfied a need to evoke the zest, freakishness and game of the life around us. Kaprow himself finds the Cape Kennedy rocket launchings among the most powerful quasi-Happenings. And one embittered cynic recently compared the war in Viet Nam to a ’Happening gone out of control’.
Most important, an art form has developed in the last nine years, and more than fitfty men and women around the globe are making Happenings of one kind or another. During this time Allan Kaprow has emerged not only as the inventot and theorist of the movement, but as a creator of works whose expressive range extends from the funny to the somber, and whose experimental nature has set the pace for a field. It is now inconceivable for anyone working in th art not to deal with the paths of action he has marked off" (Covertext, zit. nach http://www.aqualoop.com).