Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Allan Kaprow had a long career as an experimental artist, educator, and educational reformer. In his speeches and essays, he made it clear that he was against the explicit teaching of formalist principles. He felt they were formulaic and outdated as they did not align with the new forms and innovations happening in the contemporary art world. Instead, he was a strong advocate for appointing artists as teachers, seeking to bring contemporary concerns into classrooms. Kaprow was not interested in the objectivity or measurability of art and his work with Happenings created a new relationship with form. In 1966, he outlined eleven rules for Happenings, one of which was that there should be no audience as the performances were created for the participants. With this rule, participation became his medium, and he found the most willing participants in his students. Kaprow looked to methods in children’s play when writing his scores, as it takes place naturally without a script or audience and is grounded in inquiry. As his Happening scores allowed for some level of interpretation, students inevitably took on some of the authorship, creating shared authorship with their teacher; raising ethical questions. An interesting comparison can be drawn between Kaprow’s Happenings with public-school adolescents and his older CalArts students, as they both displayed his interest in systems and their disruption or dismantling. They also explored the concept of futility, allowed the chance for complex social dynamics to ensue, and were generally reflective of some metaphor for life.