Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. In the 1960s, his "happenings," a form of spontaneous, non-linear action, revolutionized the practice of performance art.

Publications

• How to Make a Happening, 1966. LP.

• editor, Assemblages, Environments and Happenings, New York: H.N. Abrams, 1966, 341 pp. Excerpt. [1]

• Some Recent Happenings, 1966; ubu.classics, 2004.

• "The Education of the Un-Artist", 3+1 parts, 1970-1974.
  • La educación del des-artista, eds. & trans. Armando Montesinos and David Garcia Casado, Madrid: Ardora, 2007, 128 pp. Publisher. (Spanish)

• Comfort Zones, Madrid: Galería Vandres, 1975, 28 pp. Catalogue.

• Echo-logy, New York: D'Arc, 1975, [10] pp. Catalogue.

• Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, ed. Jeff Kelley, University of California Press, 1993, 258 pp.

Catalogues

• B.H.D. Buchloh, Judith F. Rodenbeck, Experiments in the Everyday: Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts, Events, Objects, Documents, New York: Columbia University, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, 1999. [2]

• Allan Kaprow -- Art as Life, eds. Eva Meyer-Hermann, Andrew Perchuk, and Stephanie Rosenthal, Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008, vii+358 pp. Exh. held at Haus der Kunst, Munich, Oct. 17-Jan. 21, 2007; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Feb. 10-Apr. 22, 2007; Kunsthalle Bern, Jun. 2-Aug. 26, 2007; Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genoa, Nov. 29, 2007-Feb. 10, 2008; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Mar. 23-Jun. 30, 2008.

Literature

• Jeff Kelley, Childsplay: The Art of Allan Kaprow, forew. David Antin, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, 249 pp.

• Judith F. Rodenbeck, Radical Prototypes: Allan Kaprow and the Invention of Happenings, MIT Press, 2011.

• Eva Ehninger , "What’s Happening? Allan Kaprow and Claes Oldenburg Argue about Art and Life", Getty Research Journal 6, 2014, pp 195-202.

• Alex Potts, "Form and the Postwar Neo-Avant-Garde: Allan Kaprow’s Critical Writing", Selva 6, Spring 2025.

• Emily Ruth Capper, "Modernist Pedagogies in Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts", Selva 6, Spring 2025.

Links

• http://allankaprow.com
• http://www.ubu.com/historical/kaprow/
• http://www.ubu.com/sound/kaprow.html
• http://www.giorgiomaffei.it/libri/allan_kaprow_a_bibliography.php
• http://readingbetween.org/artwhichcantbeart.pdf
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Kaprow