Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow , born in 1927 with Atlantic City in the New Jersey and dead on April 5th, 2006 is an American artist .

Initially painter lyric abstract. Former student of Hans Hoffmann, it follows the courses of John Cage in New School for Social Research in 1957. John Cage familiarized his pupils with the thought of Duchamp, the Bouddhisme Zen, Artaud and Satie.

Inspired by its Masters (Cage and Duchamp) and by the various tendencies of the school of New York, it becomes the head of file of those which reject all the generally accepted ideas concerning art, at the point to erase all the borders between art and not-art. It contributed with others (Jim Dine, Red Grooms, Claes Oldenburg and Robert Whitman) to create the “Happening” (Action theater, term invented by him). One can also say “multi-media event”. This term of “happening”, literally “ what is occurring ”, was employed by the artist to explain a ritual putting it in scene and implying the participation of the public. The " happening" is the heir to the artistic provocations of the artists to the Dadaïsme and multidisciplinary experiments of the artists of the Surréalisme.

It is in 1959 that it presents its first happening led to the Ruben Gallery, the 18 Happenings in Six Shares . The weather initially was assemblies of various objects of reduced size (one could not penetrate there physically). Then, it passed to the visual environments by drawing the attention to concrete spaces and objects. He writes a very important book on the Assemblages, Environnements and Happenings in 1966. It is an anthology of happenings and events carried out by many artists, on of which Rauschenberg, Dine, Oldenburg, the group Gutai and Vostell.

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