Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow is considered to be the founding father of the Happening, of Environments and Activities: terms that he continued to redefine throughout his career.

With a wide selection of images, this unique large-format publication documents Kaprow’s posters, a lesser-known side of his work, produced between 1953 and 1996.

Most of these posters were designed by Allan Kaprow and are characterized by their aesthetic quality, the earliest ones in particular a combination of hand-lettered text and drawings and the later ones of photographs and typographic text in a minimalist style.

More than merely advertising Happenings or Activities, these posters act as scores/tools for the participants to the Happenings and as everyday objects that blur the boundaries between art and life.… (meer)

This pamphlet presents scenarios for three narratively elaborate Happenings—“Mushroom” (1962), “Paper” (1964), and “Interruption” (1967)—and a key early statement, which originally accompanied the first published Happening in 1958. The essay forcefully propounds Kaprow’s ideas on the practice of art as a radical form of life that perpetually reinvents itself.

Originally published by Something Else Press between 1965 and 1967, the Great Bear Pamphlet series was envisioned by founding editor Dick Higgins as a “poor man’s keys to the new art,” or a means of exposing the most vital work of the time to a mass-market audience, and vice versa. The series made uncompromisingly radical work maximally accessible, with slim, chapbook-like publications of a mostly uniform, pared down design. Taken together, the pamphlets constitute a firsthand survey of the sixties avant-garde (Higgins, Barbara Moore, and Emmett Williams all had a hand in the editorial process) that is both sweeping and utterly unique, transmitting a still-vibrant signal of expanded possibility in art, music, and poetry. Presented here in a facsimile edition, the Great Bears epitomize the utopian vision of Higgins and Something Else.… (meer)

Some Recent Happenings is a general introduction to Happenings, and is a dispatch on the forms they were taking at this key point in their development. This book includes four scenarios from 1964-65, notes and information on the performance history of each scenario, and a brief overview of Kaprow’s career and relevant publications.

Originally published by Something Else Press between 1965 and 1967, the Great Bear Pamphlet series was envisioned by founding editor Dick Higgins as a “poor man’s keys to the new art,” or a means of exposing the most vital work of the time to a mass-market audience, and vice versa. The series made uncompromisingly radical work maximally accessible, with slim, chapbook-like publications of a mostly uniform, pared down design. Taken together, the pamphlets constitute a firsthand survey of the sixties avant-garde (Higgins, Barbara Moore, and Emmett Williams all had a hand in the editorial process) that is both sweeping and utterly unique, transmitting a still-vibrant signal of expanded possibility in art, music, and poetry. Presented here in a facsimile edition, the Great Bears epitomize the utopian vision of Higgins and Something Else.… (meer)