Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow's sustained enquiry into the paradoxical relationship of art to life and into the nature of meaning itself is brought into life in this expanded collection of his most significant writings.

Expanded Edition

Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life

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.

Jeff Kelley

"Childsplay is an extraordinary book. Jeff Kelley not only narrates the history of Allan Kaprow's art but also tells the story of art in the last half of the twentieth century from an entirely fresh point of view. He makes sense of performance history in the context of developments in the more traditional art media in a way that I find consistently illuminating."—Henry Sayre, author of The Object of Performance: The American Avant-Garde Since 1970 "Allan Kaprow's Happenings? You had to be there, goes the retort. But the next best thing, it turns out, is reading David Antin's witty first-hand accounts and Jeff Kelley's illuminating discussion of this singular form of vanguard performance art."—Christopher Knight, art critic, Los Angeles Times "Allan Kaprow is one of those rare artists whose ideas and innovations have changed the practice and theory of art in his own lifetime. As a founding father and a leading practitioner of performance and conceptual art, he created works that have run the risk of ephemerality, leaving few traces or objects behind them. It is the achievement of Jeff Kelley's Childsplay that Kaprow's seminal works (or "play" as the title would have it) are now brought sharply and vividly back to the present. The result is not only historically and critically alive, it is nothing short of monumental."—Jerome Rothenberg, poet, professor emeritus of visual arts and literature, University of California, San Diego "Happenings were wild, exciting, stimulating, and engaging. And best of all, the everyday person could participate. Allan Kaprow has had an enormous impact on art and performance. Now with Childsplay you will have the wonderful opportunity to revisit his work and enjoy his creativity and stunning imagination. Perhaps you will be inspired to reinvent one of Kaprow's Happenings or better yet, create one of your own."—Anna Halprin "A Happening is an important moment in twentieth-century art. To understand a Happening you must start where Happenings began, with Allan Kaprow."—Dennis Hopper

The Art of Allan Kaprow

Childsplay

Haus der Kunst München

Annette Leddy

Essays look at the life, art, and writings of the inventor of artistic "happenings," along with a retrospective of his works.

Allan Kaprow

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