Happenings
Started: 1958
Ended: Early 1970s
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THE ART STORY
 | Fluxus Movement Page |
 | Neo-Dada Movement Page |
 | Performance Art Movement Page |
 | American Art Definition Page |
KEY ARTISTS
 | Allan Kaprow Quick View Artist Page |
| Allan Kaprow |  |
| Allan Kaprow was an American painter, collagist, assemblagist and performance artist. Kaprow was best known for trailblazing the artistic concept "happenings," which were experiential artistic events rather than single works of art. Art Story: Allan Kaprow Artist Page | ||
 | John Cage Quick View Artist Page |
| John Cage | |
| John Cage was an American composer and conceptual artist who incorporated chance, silence, and environmental effects into his performances. An important art theorist, he influenced choreographers, musicians, and the Fluxus artists of the 1970s. Art Story: John Cage Artist Page | ||
 | Carolee Schneemann Quick View Artist Page |
| Carolee Schneemann | |
| Carolee Schneemann is an American visual artist, known for her discourses on the body, sexuality and gender. Her work is primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the individual in relationship to social bodies. Schneemann's works have been associated with a variety of art classifications including Fluxus, Neo-Dada, the Beat Generation, and happenings. Art Story: Carolee Schneemann Artist Page | ||
 | George Segal Quick View Artist Page |
| George Segal | |
| American sculptor and painter George Segal is best known for his life-size plaster cast figures, often in monochromatic white. He also worked with artists such as John Cage and Allan Kaprow at Rutgers University in the 1950s and 60s; Kaprow's famous "happenings" performances first took place on Segal's farm in New Jersey. Art Story: George Segal Artist Page | ||
 | George Brecht Quick View Further External Info  |
| George Brecht | |
| George Brecht was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer as well as a professional chemist, who worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, and Mobil Oil. He was a key member of, and influence on, Fluxus. Further External Info | ||
 | Robert Watts Quick View Further External Info |
| Robert Watts | |
| Robert Watts was known for his work within the Fluxus and proto-Pop movements. The American artist taught at Rutgers college in the 1950s, where he interacted closely with artists such as Allan Kaprow and Roy Lichtenstein. Further External Info | ||
"The line between the Happening and daily life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible."
Summary of Happenings
What began as a challenge to the category of "art" initiated by the Futurists and Dadaists in the 1910s and 1920s came to fruition with Performance Art, one branch of which was referred to as Happenings. Happenings involved more than the detached observation of the viewer; the artist engaged with Happenings required the viewer to actively participate in each piece. There was not a definite or consistent style for Happenings, as they greatly varied in size and intricacy. However, all artists staging Happenings operated with the fundamental belief that art could be brought into the realm of everyday life. This turn toward performance was a reaction against the long-standing dominance of the technical aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism and was a new art form that grew out of the social changes occurring in the 1950s and 1960s.
Key Ideas
Beginnings:
Happenings were inspired by the performances of Futurists who would enact short avant-garde plays and read their manifestoes and poetry on stage. The Futurist tendency to break the "fourth wall" and elicit audience participation became a central idea in the Happening: the absence of boundaries between the viewer and the artwork meant the artwork became defined by the action as opposed to the physical, or resulting, object.
Important Art and Artists of Happenings | |
 Artwork Images | American Moon (1960)Artist: Robert Whitman Artwork description & Analysis: American Moon by Robert Whitman was first performed at the Reuben Gallery in New York. The piece consisted of six paper tunnels that radiated outwards from the performance area in which the audience would sit to watch piles of cloth being moved accompanied by various sounds. Curtains with grids of paper were then hung in front of the tunnels and a movie was projected onto them while performers made slight movements to the cloth causing distortions in the movie. At the end of the screening the tunnels were ripped down and the curtains removed. Lights flashed as figures rolled on the floor, a giant plastic balloon was rolled around and someone swung on a trapeze, all to a soundtrack of a vacuum cleaner. Whitman called these works "abstract theater" as abstracted sounds and images were a significant aspect of his work. In the variety of frenzied activity, Whitman claimed his work was much like a three-ring circus. Cloth, paper, clear plastic, wood and cellophane tape |
 Artwork Images | Yard (1961)Artist: Allan Kaprow Artwork description & Analysis: Yard by Kaprow involved the random scattering and piling of tires over the floor and an invitation to visitors to climb over them. This piece was supposedly in response to Jackson Pollock's "drip" paintings: the incorporation of chance as a mainstay of the work, but with a certain amount of control left to the artist. Just as Pollock had a certain amount of power over his drip paintings, aesthetics were still very much subject to chance. Here Kaprow used the tires as Pollock used his paint. The result- a haphazard pile of tires nevertheless circumscribed into a semblance of compositional order- is a three-dimensional translation of Pollock's practice. Kaprow's pieces often involved materials from everyday life, including people; Kaprow stated, "Life is much more interesting than art." Yard, like many Happenings, has been recreated several times since Kaprow's initial installation, and each time a unique artwork is produced. Tires |
 Artwork Images | Stamp Vendor (1961)Artist: Robert Watts Artwork description & Analysis: Stamp Vendor involved stamps that artist Robert Watts created and placed inside of actual stamp dispensers that Watts "borrowed" from the United States Post Office. The "borrowing" (stealing) was in protest of certain policies of the United States government at the time Watts deemed oppressive. The stamp dispensers were put on display in exhibitions and viewers could purchase the stamps by placing coins in the coin slots. The stamps, designed by Watts, had different images on them ranging from gas cans to nude women. This piece differs from many other Happenings for the smaller, more intimate scale and for the fact that the viewer was interacting with an object as opposed to a person. Also, unlike many other Happenings that eschewed the traditional art object, it should be noted that by interacting with the Stamp Vendor, the viewer was then able to take with them a work of art: the stamp created by Watts. Commercial stamp dispenser and paper |
More Happenings Artwork and Analysis:
Content compiled and written by Tracy DiTolla
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
" Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Tracy DiTolla
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
Available from:
First published on 21 Jan 2012. Updated and modified regularly. 
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