notes ICA essay 1

-http://www.jstor.org/stable/777624 Collaboration without Object(s) in the Early Happenings -they were on the cutting edge of something not yet defined -once the problem became more defined, many artists moved to pop art to express it -it was said that happenings didnt have a preconceived goal or end product -they were artworks in themselves rather than having a end product to show/sell -the art was in the relations between individuals -haps were events and activities that blurred the lines between artists and viewer (audience) -more connected to art world than theatre because of the sites where they did them and the artists who made them (allan kaprow,jim dine, claes oldenburg) -some artists who made happenings considered themselves more poets,musicians or performance artists than fine artists (dick higgins, charlotte moorman, john cage) -often held haps in hansa and reuban galleries, judson gallery -haps refused product-orientated materialism, -rejection of signature terms of originality and authorship -tried to prove jackson pollock and mark rothco wrong -cage helped start haps -event at segals farm as described by haskell, "kasprows event called for members of the group to perform simultaneous but unrelated tasks: jumping through the props kaprow and segal had made from lumber and plastic sheeting: sitting in chicken coops, rattling noisemakers, collectively painting a picture" -characteristics of happenings: mildly destructive impulses,simultaneous actions, random quality to relatednous of events,collective activity -when all the things were together the (sets, props, music) it was supposed to take away the singular authority of one artist -similar to the anti-art stance of dada -1951 publication of Robert Motherwell's anthology "The Dada Painters and Poets." According to Al Hansen's descriptions, there were many situations in which parts of these texts and others were read in Happenings. -while the Dada activities involved a direct attack on language-both instrumental, rational, communicative language and aesthetic, poetic, lyrical language-the Happenings worked against the established visual-art mastery. -happeniings were multisensory situation. -The bond which Kaprow made with his audience, and the degree to which he incorporated them as the active agents of the works, varied -In the situation at Segal's farm, the artists/visitors were the performers and audience was a moot point. -The environment at Hansa, in 1958, however, created a more conventional situation. Kaprow established the space, the obstacles, and the conditions in which the viewer-participants encountered the plastic veils, cubicled spaces, and claustrophobic or opened areas of space; similar constraints were established in Apple Shrine of two years later -The viewer of such painting could remain as detached or as involved as the viewer of any more traditional work on a large scale -the materials of Happenings respected no boundaries and were often a mass of heaped-up rubbish by an evening's end. -principles. The experience was, if anything, to be of the moment-and oneself in it -1961 piece, The Smiling Workman by jim dine -PERFORMANCE: Lasting slightly more than thirty seconds, it consisted ofDine,dressed in a paint-splattereds mock,with hisface painted red, his mouth black, rapidly scribbling, "I love what I'm doing, "in orange and blue paint on an empty canvas; he then drank from the jars ofpaint, drenched himself with what remained, and finished by diving through the canvas. This staged and destructive caricature of the Abstract Expressionist's angst-ridden relation to creative work could not be more clearly critical of the formal means of abstract painting or of its expressive emotional stance. -attempted to blur the lines between art and life -http://www.jstor.org/stable/1262630 Framed Space: Allan Kaprow and the Spread of Painting -his book Assemblage, Environments and Happenings -a sort of photo-essay, titled "Step Right In," consisting of a series of large black-and-white pictures with text interspersed. The title refers to Jackson Pollock and his comment that he works "in" his paintings. -Robert Rauschenberg, Yayoi Kusama, Robert Whitman, and Kaprow himself, all of whom, Kaprow thought, extended Pollock's legacy into three dimensions. By creating postpainterly installations that one necessarily stepped into, their work had come off the walls and expanded to fill the space of the gallery and beyond. -On the left we see a Hans Namuth photograph of Pollock at work in his studio. In his painting, Pollock is a blur, arm extended, the light that streams in from the windows above overexposing the upper half of his body. Caught in the wild light, his body is part of the canvases that surround him. Sectioned by the bands of light, he becomes part of the paintings and not just the source of the action. Pollock the man and Pollock the work become one. -his early work opened up the conjunction of viewing subject, art object and gallery space, turning space into a field for artistic production. dialogue between Pollock and Clement Greenberg. -In his essay "Towards a Newer Laocoon," Greenberg states art pieces are seperated by their mediums -despite Greenberg's later claims, he nevertheless recognized that Pollock's work operated precisely against the limitations of painting as medium, pushing painting toward sculpture and architecture as much as it engaged with two-dimensional flatness. -"The new painting," Rosenberg said, "has broken down every distinction between art and life." -exhibitions held at the Betty Parsons Gallery from 1948 to 1951.13 These shows featured Pollock's drip paintings, shown so that they covered the gallery walls, many made specifically to match their height. As Kaprow described it, they filled the viewers' senses, surrounding them in a complete environment, refusing any possibility of disembodied, purely optical viewing. -"his mural-scale paintings ceased to become paintings and became environments"-kaprow -The size of Pollock's paintings engaged, even attacked, the viewer's whole body and not just their eye -Rauschenberg wrote at the time, "Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)" -white paintings -canvases painted white with no marks to distract the viewer. the light on them shows the viewer's shadow and the art is the way the shadows play on the canvas. the ability to capture the presence of the viewer. -Cage incorporated The White Paintings into his own work, Theater Piece No. 1.41 They were suspended over the heads of the audience members at various angles as a variety of performance events took place beneath them. These events included Rauschenberg and David Tudor playing piano, poets M.C. Richards and Charles Olson reading poetry from atop a ladder, and Merce Cunningham and others dancing through the space and around the audience. -4' 33" at Carnegie Hall in 1952 and was deeply affected. He compared his experience of 4' 33" to his experience of Rauschenberg's paintings. -The sounds in the space, chairs creaking, the air condition humming, people coughing and clearing their throats-all the ambient sounds that filled the space of the auditorium-became foregrounded. -"It was like the shadows in Bob Rauschenberg's pictures," Kaprow recalled. "That is to say, there [wa]s no marking the boundary of the artwork or the boundary of so-called everyday life. They merge[d]. And we the listeners in Cage's concert and the lookers at Rauschenberg's pictures were the collaborators of the artwork." -HAPPENING EXAMPLE- hurling colors shozo shimamoto -PERFORMANCE ART EXAMPLE-performance: anthopomometries de l'epoque bleue by yves klein -PERFORMANCE EXAMPLE-how to explain art to a dead hare by joseph beuys Annals of the Association of American Geographers http://www.jstor.org/stable/2564403 -PERFORMANCE EXAMPLE- coyote: i like america and america likes me by joseph beuys ---beuys searched for holistic living and universiality, the need for reconciliation and communication with nature and socially transformitive role of art in society. -me: what is the importance of the audience being involved in a performance like the happenings? is the message still strong if portrayed in performance piece? LAYOUT OF ESSAY intro- -how are happenings and performance art the same? how are they different? -there is a need for art that includes the audience and community because art is so often falsely portrayed as only for the elite and educated. Removed from every day life when in truth, it is one of the only medias that so blatently discusses everyday life in realistic ways. 1- -define happenings and performance art -give examples of haps and perfs -goals, motivations, what were they in response to -what was happening in the world around this time 2- -how are haps and perfs the same? how are they different? -give examples of similar haps and perfs artists and 2 haps and perfs artists that are opposites -similar/diff ideologies, medias, audiences, etc. 3- why do we need happenings/performance art? why must we include community art that includes everyone? why is art often seen as excluding the majority of people and seen as only for the rich/elite/educated? is it relevant to speak about need for community art in 2013-why? conclusion- -mention again artist examples -sum up how they are basically diff/same in what ways -final recommendation for artists now-should happenings still be happening or did they do their purpose/goals?