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.

Allan Kaprow (1927-2006) was Professor Emeritus of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. Jeff Kelley is a critic and teacher.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Preface to the Expanded Edition: On the Way to Un-Art

THE FIFTIES
The Legacy of Jackson Pollock (1958)
Notes on the Creation of a Total Art (1958)

THE SIXTIES
Happenings in the New York Scene (1961)
Impurity (1963)
The Artist as a Man of the World (1964)
The Happenings Are Dead:
Long Live the Happenings! (1966)
Experimental Art (1966)
Manifesto (1966)
Pinpointing Happenings (1967)
The Shape of the Art Environment (1968)

THE SEVENTIES
The Education of the Un-Artist, Part I (1971)
The Education of the Un-Artist, Part II (1972)
Doctor MD (1973)
The Education of the Un-Artist, Part III (1974)
Video Art: Old Wine, New Bottle (1974)
Formalism: Flogging a Dead Horse (1974)
Nontheatrical Performance (1976)
Participation Performance (1977)
Performing Life (1979)

THE EIGHTIES
The Real Experiment (1983)
Art Which Can't Be Art (1986)
Right Living (1987)

THE NINETIES
The Meaning of Life (1990)
Maestro Maciunas (1996)
Just Doing (1997)

Selected Bibliography of Allan Kaprow's Writings on Art
Index 257