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Friday, 14 March 2008 | Levent OZLER
Allan Kaprow: Art as Life
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) presents Allan Kaprow- Art as Life, the first major retrospective of Allan Kaprow (1927-2006), one of the most influential artists of the postwar era. On view at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA March 23, 2008-June 30, 2008, the exhibition is a thought-provoking examination of a prolific and innovative career that spanned more than 50 years. Beginning with figurative paintings from the late 1940s, the exhibition traces the development of Kaprow's oeuvre through works from the mid-1950s which he called Action Collages and eventually led to the creation of all-encompassing Environments. Integral to the exhibition are reinventions of Kaprow's unprecedented Happenings of the late 1950s to mid-1960s in which events replaced objects as the focus of the artwork and the spectator played a pivotal role in the realization of the work. Having held faculty positions at the California Institute of the Arts and the University of California, San Diego, Kaprow had a particularly strong connection to the Southern California contemporary art scene and a profound impact on his students.
MOCA Director Jeremy Strick notes that, "Kaprow was a pioneer in the area of performance art-his Happenings blurred the line between art and life and invited spectators to be active participants in the artistic process. MOCA is proud to host this unusual retrospective that not only reflects this influential maverick, but also presents an exceptional opportunity for unique collaboration among many arts organizations."
The concept of Allan Kaprow- Art as Life was conceived by Eva Meyer-Hermann and Stephanie Rosenthal. The show was co-organized by the Haus der Kunst, Munich, and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. MOCA's presentation of the exhibition is organized by MOCA Curator Philipp Kaiser in collaboration with The Getty Research Institute's Assistant Director for Contemporary Programs and Research Andrew Perchuk and artist Paul McCarthy.
Trained in the late 1940s as an art historian, Allan Kaprow was educated in painting by New York School-artist Hans Hofmann. Kaprow was theoretically and practically well equipped to question the prevailing style of abstract expressionism in New York in the 1950s and his early works grew into space-consuming assemblages of everyday objects, finally leading to entire Environments. After studying radical musical compositions with composer John Cage at the New School for Social Research, Kaprow began to incorporate elements of chance and unpredictability into his work. By the end of the '50s, Kaprow coined the term "Happening" by introducing theatrical categories into traditional artworks, transforming his pieces into activities and enactments. As the pioneer of this new mode of practice, Allan Kaprow redefined the relationship between the object and the viewer; people were no longer mere spectators of art, they became active participants.
The exhibition is organized into two related sections. The first, titled "Museum as Mediation," includes a comprehensive selection of early works, with paintings Kaprow made while a student of Hans Hofmann. This segment of the exhibition also incorporates collages, scores, and activity sheets, as well as photographic and video documentation and examines the relationship between Happenings and action painting; the role of chance and indeterminacy; the influences of Jackson Pollock, John Cage, and feminism; and the artist's reconsideration of the artwork as a physical object. The second section, "Agency for Action," includes reinventions of Kaprow's Happenings and Environments and actively demonstrates the interactive components of his work. Exclusive to MOCA's presentation, this portion of the exhibition explores Kaprow's core principles of site-specificity, impermanence, and doubt through sculptural interactions accompanied by the artist's loosely scripted participant activities.
MOCA Curator Philipp Kaiser comments, "Kaprow saw his work as 'un-art' and believed the act of creating art was as important as the finished product. By revisiting some of his most well-known Happenings and reenvisioning seminal Environments with artists that worked closely with him, we are promoting Kaprow's belief in art as a medium for the exploration of the intrinsic artistic value of everyday life."
The reinventions of three Environments will be realized at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA by local artists, John Baldessari and Skylar Haskard, Allen Ruppersberg, and Barbara T. Smith, all of whom knew Allan Kaprow as a friend, colleague, and mentor. Also installed on site is a special project created by Suzanne Lacy, a former student and colleague of Kaprow, along with Peter Kirby and Michael Rotondi. The work titled Trade Talk is inspired by Kaprow's unique practices and is based on one of his Happenings, Trading Dirt (1983). Los Angeles- based artist Paul McCarthy - a longtime friend and colleague of Allan Kaprow- has acted as a consultant and advisor on the reinventions of Happenings for MOCA and will recreate a selection of private Happenings during the course of the exhibition.
Illustrative of Kaprow's influence in Southern California's contemporary art landscape, 29 arts organizations and schools-including California Institute of the Arts, Critical Mass Performance Group, The Getty Research Institute, Hammer Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Loyola Marymount University, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), Otis College of Art and Design, Santa Monica Museum of Art, University of California at San Diego, and University of Southern California- will participate in the restaging of some of Kaprow's most iconic Happenings at various sites throughout Southern California. The Getty Foundation, one of the country's leading funders of the arts, provided generous grant support to MOCA for the Happenings as part of the Foundation's special initiative, On the Record: Art in Los Angeles, 1945-1980. A major collaboration between the Getty Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and art institutions across Southern California, this program's primary goal is to preserve and interpret the history of modern and contemporary art in postwar Los Angeles.
"We are delighted to help MOCA and the other Los Angeles institutions involved in this project reinvent Allan Kaprow's legendary Happenings around the city," says Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation. "This grant is part of the Getty's commitment to make accessible the collections and records that tell the story of avant-garde art in Southern California in the decades following World War II."
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