Allan Kaprow, Robert Smithson, and the Limits to Art

This innovative study of two of the most important artists of the twentieth century links the art practices of Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson in their attempts to test the limits of art--both what it is and where it is. Ursprung provides a sophisticated yet accessible analysis, placing the two artists firmly in the art world of the 1960s as well as in the art historical discourse of the following decades. Although their practices were quite different, they both extended the studio and gallery into desert landscapes, abandoned warehouses, industrial sites, train stations, and other spaces. Ursprung bolsters his argument with substantial archival research and sociological and economic models of expansion and limits.

Philip Ursprung is Swiss National Science Foundation Professor for Art History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Visiting Curator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and an elected member of the Swiss Federal Commission for the Arts.

List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction
Limits to Growth: The Sixties and Early Seventies
The Continental European Perspective

Allan Kaprow and the Limits to Painting
“Oedipal—just for fun”: Allan Kaprow and Art History
Environments
“The Legacy of Jackson Pollock”
The Hansa Gallery
Art and the Division of Labor: 18 Happenings in 6 Parts
My 18 Happenings in 6 Parts
The Happeners’ Bodies
A Service for the Dead
Calling
The Triumph of Pop Art
The Nonentry of Happenings into the Art Museum
“Happenings in the New York Scene”
Claes Oldenburg versus Allan Kaprow
Naturalism and Modernism
Performing Architecture
Site Specificity
Fluids

The Limits to Sculpture: Robert Smithson and Earth Art
The Excursions: Critiquing Minimalism
“The Crystal Land”
“The Monuments of Passaic”
“Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan”
Hotel Palenque
The Triumph of Minimal Art
The Sculpture Boom and the Case of Michael Fried
Robert Smithson and Marcel Duchamp
Dan Graham and the Legacy of Robert Smithson
Site and Nonsite
Robert Smithson as the Artistic Advisor to the Dallas–Fort Worth Airport
A Nonsite (An Indoor Earthwork)
Limits
Earthworks
Entropy
Partially Buried Woodshed
Spiral Jetty
Political Landscape
Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer
The Military Sublime: Earth Art and the War in Vietnam
“Cultural Confinement”
Broken Circle/Spiral Hill and the Land Reclamation Projects

The Limits to Art History
Texts, Ephemeral Media, and Technical Reproductions in Art Scholarship
Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Art Credits
Index