Happening
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2008-07-15T16:01:40Z
Korg
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Reverted edits by [[Special:Contributions/Pink!Teen|Pink!Teen]] ([[User talk:Pink!Teen|talk]]) to last version by Lightbot
{{other|The Happening}}
A '''happening''' is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered as [[art]]. Happenings take place anywhere, are often multi-disciplinary, often lack a narrative and frequently seek to involve the audience in some way. Key elements of happenings are planned, but artists sometimes retain room for [[improvisation]].
In the later sixties, perhaps due to the depiction in films of [[hippie]] culture, the term was used much less specifically to mean any gathering of interest, from a [[pool hall]] [[meetup]] or a [[jam session|jamming]] of a few young people to a beer blast or fancy formal party.
==History==
===Origins===
[[Allan Kaprow]] first coined the term '''happening''' in the Spring of 1957 at an art picnic at [[George Segal (artist)|George Segal]]'s farm to describe the art pieces that were going on. ''Happening'' first appeared in print in the Winter 1959 issue of the [[Fluxus at Rutgers University|Rutgers University]] undergraduate literary magazine, ''Anthologist''.<ref>Joan M. Marter and Simon Anderson, ''Off Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-Garde, 1957-1963'', Rutgers University Press, 1999, p10. ISBN 0813526108</ref> The form was imitated and the term was adopted by artists across the [[United States|U.S.]], [[Germany]], and [[Japan]]. [[Jack Kerouac]] referred to Kaprow as "the Happenings man," and an ad showing a woman floating in outer space declared, "I dreamt I was in a happening in my [[Maidenform]] brassiere."
Kaprow’s piece ''18 Happenings in 6 Parts'' (1959) is commonly cited as the first happening, although that distinction is sometimes given to a 1952 performance of ''Theater Piece No. 1'' at [[Black Mountain College]] by [[John Cage]], one of Kaprow's teachers in the mid-1950s. Cage stood reading from a ladder, [[Charles Olson]] read from another ladder, [[Robert Rauschenberg]] showed some of his paintings and played scratched [[phonograph]] records, [[David Tudor]] performed on a [[prepared piano]] and [[Merce Cunningham]] danced.<ref>Stuart Dale Hobbs, ''The End of the American Avant Garde'', NYU Press, 1997, p109. ISBN 0814735398</ref> All these things took place at the same time, among the audience rather than on a stage. Happenings flourished in [[New York City]] in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Key contributors to the form included [[Carolee Schneemann]], [[Red Grooms]], [[Robert Whitman]], [[Jim Dine]], [[Claes Oldenburg]] and [[Robert Rauschenberg]]. Some of their work is documented in Michael Kirby's book ''Happenings'' (1966).
More recently (2005) the work of the [[JanFamily]] (London-based) informal artist group has been regarded as the continuation of the Happening movement, in the [[Tate Modern]], [[Tate Britain]], [[Palais de Tokyo]] and many other international venues.
===Around the world===
Poet and painter [[Adrian Henri]] claimed to have organized the first happenings in England in [[Liverpool]] in 1962,<ref>B. J. Moore-Gilbert, ''Cultural Revolution?: The Challenge of the Arts in the 1960s'', Routledge, 1992, p90. ISBN 0415078245</ref> taking place during the Merseyside Arts Festival.<ref>Günter Berghaus, ''Happenings in Europe: Trends, Events and Leading Figures'', in Mariellen R. Sandford, ''Happenings and Other Acts'', Routldge, 1995, p368. ISBN 0415099366</ref> The most important event in London was the Albert Hall “[[International Poetry Incarnation]]” on [[June 11]], [[1965]], where an audience of 7,000 people witnessed and participated in performances by some of the leading ''avant-garde'' young British and American poets of the day (see [[British Poetry Revival]] and [[Poetry of the United States]]). One of the participants, [[Jeff Nuttall]], went on to organise a number of further happenings, often working with his friend [[Bob Cobbing]], [[sound poetry|sound poet]] and [[performance poetry|performance poet]].
In [[Belgium]], the first happenings were organized around 1965–1968 in [[Antwerp]], [[Brussels]] and [[Ostend]] by artists [[Hugo Heyrman]] and [[Panamarenko]].
In the [[Netherlands]], [[Provo (movement)|Provo]] organized happenings around the little statue "Het Lieverdje" on the Spui, a square in the centre of [[Amsterdam]], from 1966 till 1968. [[Police]] often [[raid (police action)|raid]]ed these events.
In [[Australia]], the [[Yellow House Artist Collective]] in [[Sydney]] housed 24-hour happenings throughout the early 1970s.
Behind the [[Iron Curtain]], in [[Poland]], artist and theater director [[Tadeusz Kantor]] staged the first happenings starting in 1965. Also, in the second half of 1980s, a student-based happening movement [[Orange Alternative]] founded by Major [[Waldemar Fydrych]] became known for its much attended happenings (over 10 thousand participants at one time) aimed against the military regime led by [[Wojciech Jaruzelski|General Jaruzelski]] and the fear blocking the Polish society ever since the [[Martial Law]] had been imposed in December 1981.
==See also==
* [[Performance art]]
* [[Fluxus]]
* [[Situationist International|Situationism]]
* [[Flash mob]]
* [[Fluxus at Rutgers University]]
* [[Bread and Puppet Theater]]
* [[Gutai group]]
==References==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
* [http://www.doctorhugo.org/happenings.html Happenings in Belgium]
* [http://pomaranczowa-alternatywa.republika.pl Happenings by Orange Alternative in Poland]
* [http://www.ubu.com/historical/kaprow/index.html Allan Kaprow on U B U W E B]
* [http://www.mailartist.com/johnheldjr/InterviewWithAlanKaprow.html Interview with Alan (sic) Kaprow]
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