The late 1950s simmered with artistic discontent. Abstract Expressionism, the dominant force for years, felt perhaps a little too established, too… gallery-bound for some restless creators. A new energy was bubbling up, one that didn’t quite fit into neat frames or onto pristine pedestals. This burgeoning force, raw and unpredictable, would soon coalesce into something loosely termed “Happenings,” events that ripped open the conventions of art and laid crucial groundwork for what we now call Performance Art.
What Exactly Was Going On?
Pinning down a precise definition for Happenings is notoriously tricky, and that’s kind of the point. Coined, or at least popularized, by artist Allan Kaprow in 1959 for his piece “18 Happenings in 6 Parts,” the term described events that were part theatre, part visual art, part structured improvisation, and entirely unconventional. These weren’t plays with scripts or paintings to be passively observed. Happenings were often chaotic, multi-sensory experiences unfolding in real-time, frequently in non-traditional spaces like lofts, basements, storefronts, or even out on the street. They deliberately blurred the lines between the artwork, the artist, and the audience, often incorporating viewers directly into the action, whether they knew it or not.
Key figures like Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Red Grooms, and Robert Whitman, among others, spearheaded this movement, primarily in New York City but with ripples felt elsewhere. They drew inspiration from various sources – the chance operations of John Cage, the gestures of Abstract Expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock (seeing the act of painting as performance), and the earlier provocations of Dada and Surrealism. But Happenings had a distinctly American flavour, infused with the grit and consumer culture of the post-war era.
Shattering the Mold
The most radical aspect of Happenings was their assault on traditional artistic mediums and contexts. They rejected the idea of art as a static, finished object meant for contemplation in a silent gallery. Instead, they embraced:
- Process over Product: The experience of the event itself was the artwork. Often, little tangible evidence remained afterward beyond photographs, descriptions, or memories.
- Non-Art Materials: Everyday objects, junk, food, sounds, smells – anything could be incorporated. Oldenburg’s “The Store,” for example, was a functioning storefront filled with brightly painted plaster sculptures of everyday commodities.
- Blurring Art and Life: Actions often mimicked or exaggerated mundane activities. The performance space wasn’t separate from life; it was embedded within it, often crudely constructed and deliberately messy.
- Audience Involvement: Spectators were rarely passive observers. They might be navigated through different environments, handed objects, subjected to strange sounds or tasks, becoming unwitting participants in the unfolding chaos. Kaprow’s instructions were often more like loose scenarios than rigid scripts.
- Time and Space: Happenings were time-based and site-specific. They unfolded over a set duration, and the specific environment was integral to the piece. Moving a Happening often meant fundamentally changing it.
Allan Kaprow, often considered the central figure, viewed Happenings as an extension of painting. He sought to break free from the canvas entirely. His events were intentionally ephemeral, challenging the commodification of art and emphasizing direct, unmediated experience.
The Atmosphere of a Happening
Imagine stepping into a dimly lit loft. Strange sounds echo – maybe recorded noise, maybe live performers banging on objects. People are moving through partitioned spaces, perhaps following vague instructions or simply exploring. You might encounter someone slowly wrapping furniture in plastic, another group methodically stacking tires, or someone reading nonsensical text. Smells might be involved – burnt toast, cheap perfume. The structure is loose, events overlap, and there’s no clear narrative climax or resolution. It’s confusing, possibly frustrating, maybe exhilarating. That was the essence – an immersive, often jarring, multi-layered experience designed to shake up perceptions.
Claes Oldenburg’s Ray Gun Theater pieces, staged in his environment “The Store,” involved grotesque characters, slapstick violence, and bizarre monologues, all performed amidst his lumpy, painted sculptures. Jim Dine often incorporated autobiographical elements, using repeated motifs and sometimes performing actions himself within constructed environments. Each artist had their own distinct flavour, but the common thread was this radical break from passive viewing and object-based art.
Paving the Way for Performance Art
While distinct, Happenings were undeniably the fertile soil from which Performance Art grew. The connections are clear and profound. Happenings established several key precedents:
- The Artist’s Presence: Although Happenings often involved multiple participants and less focus on a single virtuoso performer, they foregrounded the artist’s role as an orchestrator of live events, moving beyond being solely a maker of objects. This paved the way for artists using their own bodies as the primary medium.
- Time as a Medium: By existing in duration, Happenings fundamentally shifted the focus from static objects to time-based experiences. This is the absolute bedrock of Performance Art.
- Audience Relationship: The interactive and confrontational nature of Happenings forced a new relationship between the artist and the viewer. Performance Art would continue to explore, challenge, and redefine this dynamic in myriad ways.
- Breaking Medium Boundaries: The inherent interdisciplinarity of Happenings – mixing visual elements, sound, movement, theatre – directly influenced the mixed-media nature of much Performance Art.
- Conceptual Emphasis: While visually and sonically rich, Happenings were driven by ideas – about art, life, perception, participation. The concept behind the action became as important, if not more so, than any aesthetic outcome. This conceptual underpinning is crucial to Performance Art.
- Alternative Spaces: Moving art out of the gallery and museum context was a radical act. Performance Art frequently utilizes non-traditional venues or directly engages with public space, following the path Happenings forged.
It’s important not to see Happenings and Performance Art as identical. While Happenings were often sprawling and chaotic with diffused focus, much Performance Art that followed became more focused on the single artist’s body, specific actions (often testing endurance or social norms), or clearer conceptual statements. Happenings emphasized environmental immersion and collaborative (even if directed) action.
From Loose Scenarios to Focused Actions
Think of it as an evolution. Happenings broke the dam, letting art flood out of its traditional containers. They emphasized environment, chance, and a kind of collective, albeit guided, experience. Performance Art, emerging more strongly in the later 60s and 70s, often channeled that liberated energy into more focused, sometimes more personal or political, live actions. Artists like Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Marina Abramović, or Carolee Schneemann built upon the legacy of Happenings, but often with a sharper focus on the artist’s body as the site of action, endurance, or social commentary.
The unstructured, often messy, participatory nature of Happenings gave artists permission to use time, space, their bodies, and direct audience engagement as legitimate artistic strategies. They demonstrated that art could be an event, an action, an experience, rather than just an object. Without the groundbreaking, boundary-dissolving experiments of Kaprow, Oldenburg, Dine, and their contemporaries in the dusty lofts and repurposed storefronts of the early 1960s, the landscape of contemporary art, and particularly the powerful field of Performance Art, would look vastly different.
The legacy isn’t just in Performance Art either. Installation art, immersive theatre, and socially engaged practices all owe a debt to the radical propositions embedded within those early, fleeting Happenings. They cracked open the definition of art, and things have never been quite the same since.
