Alan Kaprow
Gifts to a City (Calendar)
Artist
Alan Kaprow
Original Title
Gifts to a City (Calendar)
Date1971
Mediumoffset print, string; 19 leaves + envelope
Dimensions41,5 × 33 cm
Classifications(not assigned)
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha (Marie and Milan Knížák Fluxus Collection)
DescriptionAllan Kaprow was an American experimental artist, pioneer of performance art, and an important member of the international Fluxus movement. Kaprow’s approach to art is encapsulated by his proclamation that: “Life is much more interesting than art”; for this reason, he pursued a synthesis of art and life while also championing the idea that art should make use of perishable materials. His early work was influenced by abstract expressionism, which interested him due its creative processuality. Kaprow initially sought to follow a similar approach in his action collages and assemblages from found mundane objects, which he created through a frantic, ritualistic process. During the late 1950s, he introduced the terms “environment” and “happenings” into the art world. These concepts changed and broadened the very idea of art and became one of the defining features of both Fluxus and the New York avantgarde of the 1960s. Kaprow incorporated the audience into his happenings, giving a degree of creative agency to his viewers and their own experience. His happenings initially unfolded according to a pre-defined script; later, they became looser and more spontaneous. Kaprow’s environments and happenings were always transient and usually incorporated cheap, mundane materials, highlighting the transformative nature of his artistic practice. Moreover, they took place in spaces such as shops, gyms, parking lots, and other locations incongruous with conventional ideas about exhibition spaces. One of Kaprow’s most significant works of this kind was 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959) at the Reuben Gallery in New York, which combined music, theatre, and dance into a single artwork. Another notable piece, titled Yard (1961), saw him fill the courtyard of the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York with hundreds of car tires. Visitors were invited to engage with the space as they wished and, in doing so, become part of the artwork. The piece demonstrated the possibilities of expanding sculpture as a medium and blurring the boundaries between “lifelike” art and “artlike” art. By transferring the artwork into an unconventional setting and using waste materials, Kaprow intentionally opposed the fetishisation and aestheticization of art. Probably his most famous happening is Eat (1964), which took place in a dimly lit cave, where people could taste different foods and drinks while the space was permeated by the recorded sound of ticking metronomes set to the tempo of the human heart. During their hour-long visit, people could eat and drink—consumption of the artwork was meant to encompass all the senses and thus erase the division between art and life. In this aim, Kaprow drew on the ideas of Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. Among Kaprow’s most ambitious happenings was Fluids (1967), which entailed massive blocks of ice being placed in different locations around Pasadena, California, and subsequently being left to gradually melt. The resulting liquid was meant to evoke a critical view of human labour in capitalist societies, which are fundamentally based on work and consumption. The ephemerality and instability of the material spotlighted the impossibility of selling the artwork, despite the people involved dedicating hours of manual labour to installing the ice blocks. During the late 1960s, when happenings started to become part of the artistic mainstream, Kaprow pursued an even more intimate and introspective type of event, influenced by his studies of Zen Buddhism, which he called “activities”. In the 1970s, he began exploring the possibilities of video as a means of capturing the overlaps of art and everyday life. In 1978, he created a series of charcoal-on-paper drawings titled Drawing Based Upon the Breath. These works were inspired by Zen meditation a mostly consisted of simple geometric shapes, their lines and morphologies derived from breathing, movement, and calmness.
This calendar titled Gifts to a City (Calendar, 1971) is an example of Kaprow’s photographic publications, in which he documented many of his happenings from August 1971.
Allan Kaprow (1927, Atlantic City, New Jersey – 2006, Encinitas, California) studied at New York University (1945–1949) and later received a master’s degree in art history from Columbia University (1952). During his undergraduate studies, he also studied painting at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art (1947-1948). A particularly formative educational experience in Kaprow’s artistic development was a class in composition, taught by John Cage at the New School for Social Research, which he attended during the late 1950s. In 1953, Kaprow began teaching at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he met several other future members of the Fluxus movement. In 1956, his influential essay The Legacy of Jackson Pollock was published, in which he urged artists to shift their attention from material art to non-specific and transient works. Another one of his important publications is Assemblages, Environments, and Happenings (1966), which also included documentation of Milan Knížák’s events, thus contextualizing them within contemporary international artistic tendencies. Alongside a pioneering career that earned him National Endowment for the Arts awards in 1974 and 1979 and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979, Kaprow also cultivated a remarkable academic career. Besides teaching art history at Rutgers University in New Jersey, he also lectured at the Pratt Institute in New York and numerous other institutions. He was eventually able to apply his interest in innovative pedagogy while acting as associate dean at the California Institute of the Arts (1969–1974), and later while teaching at the University of California San Diego. Kaprow’s work has been presented at important art events such as Documenta 6 (1977) and Documenta 8 (1987) in Kassel and the 45th Venice Biennale (1993). In 2006, a comprehensive retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. His work continues to be exhibited worldwide, including the current exhibitions Something Like an Appleseed (2023) at the Nam Jun Paik Center in South Korea and If the Berlin Wind Blows My Flag: Art and Internationalism Before the Fall of the Berlin Wall at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Documentation of his career, officially known as The Allan Kaprow Papers, 1950–1990, is housed at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
This calendar titled Gifts to a City (Calendar, 1971) is an example of Kaprow’s photographic publications, in which he documented many of his happenings from August 1971.
Allan Kaprow (1927, Atlantic City, New Jersey – 2006, Encinitas, California) studied at New York University (1945–1949) and later received a master’s degree in art history from Columbia University (1952). During his undergraduate studies, he also studied painting at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art (1947-1948). A particularly formative educational experience in Kaprow’s artistic development was a class in composition, taught by John Cage at the New School for Social Research, which he attended during the late 1950s. In 1953, Kaprow began teaching at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he met several other future members of the Fluxus movement. In 1956, his influential essay The Legacy of Jackson Pollock was published, in which he urged artists to shift their attention from material art to non-specific and transient works. Another one of his important publications is Assemblages, Environments, and Happenings (1966), which also included documentation of Milan Knížák’s events, thus contextualizing them within contemporary international artistic tendencies. Alongside a pioneering career that earned him National Endowment for the Arts awards in 1974 and 1979 and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979, Kaprow also cultivated a remarkable academic career. Besides teaching art history at Rutgers University in New Jersey, he also lectured at the Pratt Institute in New York and numerous other institutions. He was eventually able to apply his interest in innovative pedagogy while acting as associate dean at the California Institute of the Arts (1969–1974), and later while teaching at the University of California San Diego. Kaprow’s work has been presented at important art events such as Documenta 6 (1977) and Documenta 8 (1987) in Kassel and the 45th Venice Biennale (1993). In 2006, a comprehensive retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. His work continues to be exhibited worldwide, including the current exhibitions Something Like an Appleseed (2023) at the Nam Jun Paik Center in South Korea and If the Berlin Wind Blows My Flag: Art and Internationalism Before the Fall of the Berlin Wall at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Documentation of his career, officially known as The Allan Kaprow Papers, 1950–1990, is housed at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
Milan Knížák
1977-1981
