As USF Contemporary Art Museum’s Chief Preparator, local artist Vincent Kral is usually unpacking art and hanging it on gallery walls. But with the museum closed for renovations this summer, he needed another way to bring art to USF students and visitors. Then a school project (for an MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts) prompted Kral to research Allan Kaprow, one of the founding fathers of performance art.
Allan Kaprow was an artist obsessed with action in 1940s New York. The abstract expressionist movement was just beginning, and Kaprow was a big fan of Jackson Pollock and his “action painting.” Describing Pollock’s work in a 1958 essay for ARTnews, Kaprow writes, “not only is this not the old craft of painting, but it is perhaps bordering on ritual itself, which happens to use paint as one of its materials.”
Kaprow studied under abstract expressionism’s most influential teacher, Hans Hofmann, and was greatly influenced by the movement’s more automatic approach. “In the last seventy-five years the random play of the hand upon the canvas or paper has become increasingly important,” writes Kaprow. “Strokes, smears, lines, dots, etc. became less and less attached to represented objects and existed more and more on their own, self-sufficiently.”
Back then, Kaprow was “a very accomplished painter,” Kral explains, “but he was trying to get to the actual action being the artwork.”
In 1959, Kaprow pushed the action off canvas and into real life. The resulting “happenings”— a term Kaprow coined to describe his participatory brand of performance art — encouraged people to find the art in everyday life. It was the beginning of modern performance and installation art. Kaprow’s work was such a dramatic departure from the fine art norms of his time, he sometimes called it un-art.
Kaprow’s happenings incorporated everyday objects like toothbrushes, chairs and clothes. He once built a wall of bread near the Berlin Wall using jelly as mortar, according to a 2006 article in the New York Times.
One of Kral’s favorite Kaprow happenings is Fine. He reads the script to me from Alex Potts' Allan Kaprow — Art as Life, “Parking cars in restricted zones; waiting nearby for cop; snapshot of getting ticket; detailed report; sending pics, reports, fines to the cops.”
Since the action is the artwork in Kaprow’s happenings, you won’t see Kaprow’s work in galleries. But you will see it as ‘reinventions’ like the one Kral is staging at USF Tampa this summer. The reinventions were Kaprow’s idea, according to Kral, and they started during his lifetime.
Before Kaprow, “artists were making paintings and they were in control. Jackson Pollock did all the action. We just got to see the result,” says Kral. But with Pose, Kaprow brings others in to perform the action. We are the performance. Through our participation, we become the art.
“The original script is ‘carry the chairs through the city, sitting down here and there, photographed, pics left on spot, going on,’” says Kral, “If you and I took a chair, went around and did that… Does that mean we take one picture? Do we take two? Do we swap right there, and both get a shot in the chair? Do we do two photos, or do we just do one at a time? He’s given us something to follow, but allowing us to do whatever we want, kind of. It’s open-ended a little bit.”
Starting Wednesday, May 22, students and visitors at USF Tampa will have the opportunity to participate in Kral’s reinvention of Allan Kaprow’s Pose. USF CAM is setting up a pop-up tent at a different on-campus location every Wednesday afternoon through July 10. They’re loaning Polaroid cameras and chairs out to participants, but there’s a limited supply. It’s not a bad idea to bring your own — any kind of chair and camera will do.
Take your chair and camera, and walk around campus with a friend. When you find a good spot, sit down in the chair, have your friend take your picture, then leave the Polaroid picture on the spot. As Kral pointed out, you can take as many photos of each other at as many spots as you’d like; it’s open-ended.
Much has changed since Kaprow performed the original Pose in 1969. Although Polaroid cameras are making a comeback (seriously — check Best Buy’s website if you don’t believe me), they’re not the predominant picture-making technology of the new millennium. This is why Kral added two new lines to the original Kaprow script — “digital pics” and “share location of pics.” Email your jpeg along with its location to vkral@usf.edu, and he’ll add it to a Google map.
Kaprow’s happenings are meant to be a fun adventure. In a way you are doing something especially ordinary. Walking around campus, sitting down in chairs, and taking pictures are all commonplace, but we never focus on these actions. We don’t contemplate them. We never give these actions the elevated status of art.
Kaprow’s happenings ask us to search for meaning in our everyday actions. Far from unraveling art, Kaprow’s work expanded the definition of art and inspired future generations of performance and installation artists. Before you dismiss the idea, ask yourself, “How often do I participate in a performance art piece?” Perhaps it’s not so ordinary after all.
Kaprow Reinvented: Pose, 1969-2019. University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., Tampa. Through July 10. 813-974-4133. cam.usf.edu/kaprow. Locations: Wed., May 22, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., USF Marshall Student Center (MSC); Wed., May 29, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., USF Business Administration Building Atrium (BSN); Wed., June 5, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., USF Cooper Hall (CPR); Wed., June 12, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., USF Department of Anthropology (SOC); Sat., June 15, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., USF CAM patio; Wed., June 19, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., USF School of Architecture & Community Design (HMS); June 26, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., USF College of Nursing (MDN); July 3, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., Doug Hollis’ Unspecific Gravity Public Art, next to USF Science Center (SCA); July 10, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., USF Library (LIB).
This article appears in May 23-30, 2019.