Allan Kaprow: Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (1993)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, happening, life, performance art
As the creator of “Happenings” and “Environments,” Allan Kaprow is the prince and prophet of all we call performance art today. He is also known for having written some of the most thoughtful, provocative, and influential essays of his generation. From “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock” in 1958 to “The Meaning of Life” in 1990, Kaprow has conducted a sustained philosophical inquiry into the paradoxical relationship of art to life, and thus into the nature of meaning itself. With the publication of this book, twenty-three of Kaprow’s most significant essays are brought together in one volume for the first time.
Kaprow charts his own evolution as an artist and also comments on contemporaneous developments in the arts. From the modernist avant-garde of the fifties to the current postmodern fin de sicle, Kaprow has written about–and from within–the shifting, blurring boundaries of genre, media, culture, and experience. Edited and introduced by critic Jeff Kelley, these essays bring into crisp focus the thinking of one of the most influential figures in the varied landscape of American art since the late 1950s.
Edited by Jeff Kelley
Publisher University of California Press, 1993
ISBN 0520070666, 9780520070660
258 pages
PDF (the quality of scan varies; 23 MB; three essays missing: “Impurity”, pp 28-45, “Experimental Art”, pp 66-79, “The Meaning of Life”, pp 232-247″)
Comment (0)Allan Kaprow: Comfort Zones (1975)
Filed under catalogue | Tags: · art, performance art
Comfort Zones plays with what the social sciences call “territorial bubbles” and “eye contacts”.
This catalogue was published on the the activity of Allan Kaprow (10-11 June 1975) realized for Galeria Vandres, Madrid.
Publisher Galería Vandres, Madrid, 1975
28 pages
via The DOR
PDF (54 MB)
Comment (0)Linda M. Montano (ed.): Performance Artists Talking in the Eighties: Sex, Food, Money/Fame, Ritual/Death (2000)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1980s, art, art history, art system, feminism, food, performance, performance art, religion, sexuality, video art
“Performance artist Linda Montano, curious about the influence childhood experience has on adult work, invited other performance artists to consider how early events associated with sex, food, money/fame, or death/ritual resurfaced in their later work. The result is an original and compelling talking performance that documents the production of art in an important and often misunderstood community.
Among the more than 100 artists Montano interviewed from 1979 to 1989 were John Cage, Suzanne Lacy, Faith Ringgold, Dick Higgins, Annie Sprinkle, Allan Kaprow, Meredith Monk, Eric Bogosian, Adrian Piper, Karen Finley, and Kim Jones. Her discussions with them focused on the relationship between art and life, history and memory, the individual and society, and the potential for individual and social change. The interviews highlight complex issues in performance art, including the role of identity in performer-audience relationships and art as an exploration of everyday conventions rather than a demonstration of virtuosity.”
Publisher University of California Press, 2000
ISBN 0520210220, 9780520210226
537 pages