Happenings
History and Styles of Type of Performance Art: Happening - a Modern Visual Arts Form Associated with Post-Modernist Artists.
Irish Visual Arts Information

Breadgirl Situationist Art Happening
(2006)

Happenings

A Happening is a form of contemporary visual arts expression, closely associated with Performance art, which itself has its roots in twentieth century theories of Conceptual art. In practice, it is not easy to distinguish between Performance and Happenings, both being a form of carefully planned entertainment (albeit with elements of spontaneity) during which the artist performs (or manages) a theatrical artistic event. Something which is more easily witnessed than described in words! At any rate, a Happening or a piece of Performance art hovers between drama and art, and typically both invites and elicits a strong audience response. A detailed explanation of this genre can be read in the book 'Happenings' (1965) by Michael Kirby.

Cart Art Happening (2007)

History

The actual term 'happening' was first used in 1959 by the American artist Allan Kaprow (b.1927), whose later book 'Assemblage, Environments and Happenings' (1966) influenced a wide range of modern art events. Kaprow's first 'happening' comprised 'Admission Piece: 18 Happenings in 6 Parts', (Reuben Gallery, New York, 1959), which involved spectators moving objects in the gallery, so that all distinction between art and life would disappear. Action would spring from unplanned reaction to be art. The composer John Milton Cage Jr (1912–1992), creator of '4-33' - the controversial, completely silent musical composition - provided impetus and model, and additional theoretical support came from Dada and Surrealist events.

Procession, State Happening (1991)

After 1959, other famous artists began presenting Happenings, sometimes in collaboration with Kaprow, and shows were staged in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, Cologne and Berlin. Among artists prominent in the movement were the American painter Jim Dine (b.1935), the American Pop-Artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-97), the Swedish-born sculptor Claes Oldenburg (b.1929), Robert Rauschenberg (b.1925), Joseph Beuys (1921-86), the Polish multi-media artist Tadeusz Kantor (1915-90) and the self-taught Swiss artist Ben Vautier (b.1935). Happenings multiplied through the 1960s but gave way in the early 1970s to Performance art in which greater emphasis was placed on the consciously dramatic actions of the artist.

Influence

In addition to Performance, one direct outgrowth of Happening art was the German Fluxus Movement (named after the Latin word for 'a flowing'), which was launched in 1962 by the Lithuanian born American theorist and art philosopher George Maciunas (1931-78). Its aim was to instigate an anti-art, anti-bourgeois program which combined several art forms but outside the world of commercial art. It was not unlike the earlier Dada movement, although Fluxus avoided the latter's political statements. The movement's ten year span of activity consisted mainly of street-based Happenings. Members of Fluxus included some American artists but it's main arena was Germany where Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell (b.1932) were involved for a time.

• For more information about contemporary art in Ireland, see: Irish Art Guide.

• How to Update This Mini Review of Happenings.