CategoriesStyles and Movements
Happenings
Loosely scripted live events of the late 1950s and 1960s that turned painting into action and drew audiences into the work.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for Happenings are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
The term comes from Allan Kaprow's 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959), staged in New York in a space divided into rooms, where visitors changed places on cue while performers spoke, played instruments and squeezed oranges. Kaprow, who had studied with John Cage, saw such events as the next step after Jackson Pollock's all-over paintings: if a canvas could envelop the viewer, an environment or an event could go further still.
Happenings used junk materials, simple actions and chance, and were rarely repeated exactly. Red Grooms, Jim Dine and Claes Oldenburg staged them in downtown lofts and storefronts around 1960. Kaprow's Yard (1961) filled a courtyard with used car tyres for people to clamber over. In Europe, Jean-Jacques Lebel and Wolf Vostell developed their own versions, often with a sharper political edge. The form fed directly into Fluxus, installation and performance art.
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