Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life - by Allan Kaprow (Paperback)

About the Book

"Allan Kaprow's essays sound fresh and new. . .. Artists of the world, read this--you have nothing to lose but your equilibrium."--Lucy R. Lippard, author of "Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America"

Book Synopsis

Allan Kaprow's "happenings" and "environments" were the precursors to contemporary performance art, and his essays are some of the most thoughtful, provocative, and influential of his generation. His sustained inquiry into the paradoxical relationship of art to life and into the nature of meaning itself is brought into focus in this newly expanded collection of his most significant writings. A new preface and two new additional essays published in the 1990s bring this valuable collection up to date.

From the Back Cover

"Known as the father of Happenings and Performance Art, Allan Kaprow is also a sagacious teacher, a historian, a storyteller, and, as demonstrated in this volume, one of the most perceptive and articulate cultural critics of this era. Art for Kaprow is not mere formal structure but a participatory and interactive experience of life."--Peter Selz, Coeditor of Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings (California, 1996) and author of Nathan Oliveria (California, 2002)

"Allan Kaprow's essays sound fresh and new.... Artists of the world, read this--you have nothing to lose but your equilibrium."--Lucy R. Lippard, author of Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America

Review Quotes

"Throughout these essays there is a lyric impulse, a rising of the heart, a moral passion that represents the spirit of the 60s at its best. At the same time Kaprow's thinking is exceedingly rigorous. . . . He has the optimism of the period without its willed naïveté."-- "Art in America"

About the Author

Allan Kaprow (1927-2006) was Professor Emeritus of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. Jeff Kelley is a critic and teacher.