Happenings

by Michael Kirby

Kirby's documentation & analysis of Happenings by Allan Kaprow, Red Grooms, Robert Whitman, Jim Dine, & Claes Oldenburg.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Art History

288 pages, hardback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads' database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tremendous volume. If only people were less entertained nowadays- if that need were not filled sitting at home. If there was a curiosity that arose again, a want to seek something both bizarre and familiar, coming from the neighbors who are digesting the same thing. Happenings worked because of a regionalism and they happened- recorded or not. Publicized within a community, participated within a community. Surely it was a unique moment in time- but surely we will see our own unique time and creativity cannot cease.

This has been on my shelves for over a decade and I am glad I got to it. Inspiring.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

in theory, i think ‘happenings’ are interesting, but this book chose the most boring ones to discuss!!!

[D.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Allan Kaprow, following in the footsteps of theatre innovators such as Artaud, Pirandello and Brecht, revolutionized modern art with his conception of the "happening," a space where art was participatory, commonplace and improvisational, elevating ordinary movements and moods into a mode of considered subjectivity involving audience and environment in the construction of a living and ephemeral experience. Kaprow's work is included here, along with experimental vanguard artists such as Red Grooms and Jim Dine. A seminal and inspiring collection of writings by some of the founders of conceptual participatory art. (less)

[Kendra · Rating 4 out of 5]

An individual event may be realistic, and this may be quite direct, evolving on the spot with a player and certain materials and objects, or a reconstruction. Or it may be, at an opposite extreme, an enigmatic, fantastic event, with altered objects and altered persons.

The audience is considered an object and its behavior as events.

[jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

love to pick up a random book in the library and find out all about something i never knew happened. Happenings seem so brilliant, and I love how the scripts were included here (and the images which were utterly Beautiful) had a fun little imagine at reperforming some of these scripts or perhaps writing my own.

so inspiring.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good stuff in here.

I was hoping for (anything?) more about the motivations/goals/intentions of the artists, but I'll take what I can get.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most inspiring bks of all-time for me. Happenings are visions of life lead according to the imagination. One might say that any performance, eg, is that, but I think Happenings went much further than most performances in their transformations of ordinary 'reality'. Happenings were less dependent on creating a suspension of disbelief than they were on simply (or complexly) reorganizing the matter(s) at hand into WHATEVER.

How can I 'do justice' to this bk?! If there's a way to add scans to these reviews I don't know it. If there's a way to make this computer screen reach out & tickle you I don't know it. Nothing less wd suffice. Oldenberg, eg, is pretty well-known as a pop artist, but how many people realize that when he was asked to do a Happening at a museum that he only used trash from around the site? That typifies the spirit here.

All these people took life & blew it up BIG & had FUN w/ it & let people LIVE. Living is precarious. Sometimes it's more than just working w/o a net, sometimes it's even working w/o the tightrope itself, it's walking across the void living on the faith that a tightrope isn't needed to levitate.

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Formative.