Performance Art:
[Dada, Cubist, Surrealist]
Happenings (1959-1965)
Fluxus (1961-1978)
Allan Kaprow (Happenings)
Yoko Ono (Fluxus)
Performance Art
Conceptual Art
Yoko Ono, “Snow Piece,” from Grapefruit, Summer
1963
Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail), 1959,
Reuben Gallery, New York. Kaprow is playing the musical
instrument.
Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland
Rose Lee Goldberg traces the contemporary tradition of
performance art back to the Futurist and Dada artists before
and during the First World War.
See: Rose Lee Goldberg’s book
Performance Art from Futurism to the
Present, 1979, revised and enlarge in
1988.
World War I, 19141918, was the first
“total war,” fought with
bomber planes that
carried the battlefield
to civilians in the cities
of Europe.
The total number of
casualties in World
War I, both military
and civilian, were
about 37 million: 16
million deaths and 21
million wounded. The
total number of deaths
includes 9.7 million
military personnel and
about 6.8 million
civilians.
Umberto Bocconi, Futurist Evening, 1911
The Allies lost 5.7
million soldiers and
the Central Powers
about 4 million.
City of Ypres, Belgium, after 4 years of “total war”
Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland
Hans Arp, in a 1938 essay titled "Dadaland” recalled how
Dada artists integrated all of the arts during the first world
war.:
“In Zurich in 1915, losing interest in the slaughterhouse of the
world war, we turned to the fine arts. While the thunder of
the batteries rumbled in the distance, we pasted, we recited,
we versified, we sang with all our soul. We searched for an
elementary art that would, we thought, save mankind from
the furious folly of these times. We aspired to a new order
that might restore the balance between heaven and hell.
“…Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man
and recover the natural and unreasonable order. Dada wanted
to replace the logical nonsense of the men of today by the
illogically senseless. That is why we pounded with all our
might on the big drum of Dada and trumpeted the praises of
unreason. Dada gave the Venus de Milo an enema and
permitted Laocoön and his sons to relieve themselves after
thousands of years of struggle with the good sausage
python.... Dada is senseless like nature. Dada is for nature and
against art.”
Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland
Hans Arp, in a 1938 essay titled "Dadaland” recalled how
Dada artists integrated performance with all of the other art
forms during the first world war.:
“In Zurich in 1915, losing interest in the slaughterhouse of the
world war, we turned to the fine arts. While the thunder of
the batteries rumbled in the distance, we pasted, we recited,
we versified, we sang with all our soul. We searched for an
elementary art that would, we thought, save mankind from
the furious folly of these times. We aspired to a new order
that might restore the balance between heaven and hell.
“…Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man
and recover the natural and unreasonable order. Dada wanted
to replace the logical nonsense of the men of today by the
illogically senseless. That is why we pounded with all our
might on the big drum of Dada and trumpeted the praises of
unreason. Dada gave the Venus de Milo an enema and
permitted Laocoön and his sons to relieve themselves after
thousands of years of struggle with the good sausage
python.... Dada is senseless like nature. Dada is for nature and
against art.”
Laocoön, c. 27 BC and 68 AD
Venus de Milo, c. 130 and
100 BCE
Umberto Bocconi, Futurist Evening, 1911 FUTURISM
Hugo Ball performing his poem Karawane, 1:53, 1916 DADA
Hugo Ball performing his poem Karawane, 1:53, 1916 DADA
Hugo Ball performing his poem Karawane,
1:53, 1916 DADA
Costume by Pablo Picasso, for Erik Satie
and Jean Cocteau's ballet Parade, Paris,
May 1917
Costume of the French Manager
for the Ballet “Parade”, 1917
Costume by Pablo Picasso, for Erik Satie
and Jean Cocteau's ballet Parade, Paris,
May 1917, https://youtu.be/_Chq1Ty0nyE
Buckminster Fuller and Merce Cunningham performing
in Erik Satie's play The Ruse of Medusa at Black
Mountain College, 1948, SURREALISM
Costume by Pablo Picasso, for Erik Satie
and Jean Cocteau's ballet Parade, Paris,
May 1917, https://youtu.be/_Chq1Ty0nyE
Buckminster Fuller and Merce Cunningham performing
in Erik Satie's play The Ruse of Medusa at Black
Mountain College, 1948, SURREALISM
Happenings
Allan
Kaprow first
coined the
term
"happening"
in the
spring of
1957.
Buckminster Fuller and Merce Cunningham performing
in Erik Satie's play The Ruse of Medusa at Black
Mountain College, 1948, SURREALISM
Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail), 1959, Reuben
Gallery, New York. Kaprow is playing the musical instrument.
Kaprow’s first “Happening” was inspired by the experiments
at Black Mountain as well as performances that took place in
1957, on a farm belonging to the sculptor George Segal, in
New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail), 1959, Reuben
Gallery, New York. Kaprow is playing the musical instrument.
Kaprow preparing for 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail),
1959, Reuben Gallery, New York
Entrance to Room 2, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail), 1959,
Reuben Gallery, New York
Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail), 1959, Reuben
Gallery, New York. Kaprow is in the white shirt.
The audience was given programs and three stapled cards, which
provided instructions for their participation: “The performance is
divided into six parts... Each part contains three happenings which
occur at once. The beginning and end of each will be signaled by a
bell. At the end of the performance two strokes of the bell will be
heard... There will be no applause after each set, but you may
applaud after the sixth set if you wish.”
Reenactment of 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail), 1959, Reuben
Gallery, New York
Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail), 1959, Reuben
Gallery, New York. Kaprow is in the white shirt.
After the performance at the Reuben Gallery in 1959, Kaprow wrote an essay about “Happenings”
that defined their six key features:
A. The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible.
B. The source of themes, materials, actions, and the relationships between them are to be
derived from any place or period except from the arts, their derivatives, and their milieu.
C. The performance of a Happenings should take place over several widely spaced,
sometimes moving and changing locales.
D. Time, which follows closely on space considerations, should be variable and
discontinuous.
E. Happenings should be performed only once. …Aside from the fact that repetition is boring
to a generation brought up on ideas of spontaneity and originality, to repeat a Happening at
this time is to accede to a far more serious matter: compromise of the whole concept of
Change.
F. It follows that audiences should be eliminated entirely. All the elements—people, space,
the particular materials and character of the environment, time—can in this way be
integrated.
Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts
(detail), 1959, Reuben Gallery, New
York. Kaprow is in the white shirt.
Kaprow, Yard, 1961
Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail), 1959, Reuben
Gallery, New York. Kaprow is in the white shirt.
Kaprow, Yard, 1961
Kaprow, Photoplay (1970, 2008) reinvented at The Santa Monica
Museum of Art on April 12, 2008
Fluxus
George
Maciunas
coined the
term Fluxus
for a
proposed
magazine in
1961, then
wrote this
manifesto in
1963.
George Maciunas, Fluxus Manifesto, 1963
Kaprow, Photoplay (1970, 2008) reinvented at The Santa Monica
Museum of Art on April 12, 2008
Fluxus
George Maciunas, Fluxus Manifesto, 1963
Maciunas organized the first Fluxus event in 1961 at the AG
Gallery in New York City and the first Fluxus festivals in Europe
in 1962. This is his ping-pong table from 1978, using paddles
that he created in 1964. https://youtu.be/2-_VmAzicFs, 0:58
George Maciunas, Fluxus Manifesto, 1963
George Maciunas, Fluxus Manifesto, 1963
George Maciunas, Flux Year Box 2, c. 1966, wood box with
title screen-printed on lid, containing works by numerous
Fluxus artists in the form of small objects, Flux boxes, printe
matter, and 8mm films with handheld viewer.
A box of matches with label by Ben Vautier,
1966
George Maciunas, Flux Year Box 2, c. 1966,
Wood box with title screen-printed on lid,
containing works by numerous Fluxus artists
in the form of small objects, Flux boxes,
printed matter, and 8mm films with
handheld viewer.
George Maciunas, Fluxus Manifesto, 1963
Fluxus Artists include:
George Maciunas
Nam June Paik
Yoko Ono
Joseph Beuys
….
George Maciunas, Flux Year Box 2, c. 1966,
Wood box with title screen-printed on lid,
containing works by numerous Fluxus artists
in the form of small objects, Flux boxes,
printed matter, and 8mm films with
handheld viewer.
George Maciunas, Fluxus Manifesto, 1963
Yoko Ono and John Lennon of the Beatles
originally published in 1964
Yoko Ono, Sky Machine, 1966
The viewer is invited to climb
a white ladder, where, at the
top, a magnifying glass,
attached by a chain, hangs
from a frame on the ceiling.
The viewer uses the reading
glass to discover a block
letter "instruction" beneath
the framed sheet of glass-it
says "YES."
It was through this work that
Ono met her future husband
and longtime collaborator,
John Lennon.
Yoko Ono, Ceiling Painting, 1966
Yoko Ono, Liverpool Skyladders, 2008
Yoko Ono, A Hole to See the Sky Through, 1971
Yoko Ono, Telephone Piece, 1964+
“Please answer the telephone when it rings.”
Yoko Ono, Bag Piece, 1964, text from MoMA, 2015
Yoko Ono, Bag Piece, 1964
Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, 1965 8:03
Yoko Ono, “Snow Piece,” from Grapefruit, Summer 1963
Yoko Ono, “Snow Piece,” from Grapefruit, Summer 1963