Allan Kaprow, "Art as Life" now at the MOCA

ALLAN KAPROW–ART AS LIFE
03.23.08 - 06.30.08

This large-scale retrospective presents a selection of works spanning over five decades by the renowned postwar American artist and teacher Allan Kaprow (1927–2006). Allan Kaprow–Art as Life traces the development of the artist’s oeuvre from works that incorporated everyday objects into collages and assemblages to the creation of all-encompassing environments. The exhibition consists of traditional paintings, drawings, sculptures, collages, and assemblages, along with photographs, films, videos, and activity booklets. In addition, the exhibition includes reinventions of selected Environments and Happenings, a term he coined in the late 1950s to define a new art form in which an action was extracted from the environment and replaced the traditional art object. Organized by The Haus der Kunst München in cooperation with the Van Abbemuseum, the curatorial concept for this exhibition was developed in close collaboration with the recently deceased artist, and curators Stephanie Rosenthal (Munich) and Eva Meyer-Hermann (Eindhoven).

For The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles’s, presentation of Allan Kaprow–Art as Life, an organizational team will present different aspects of Kaprow’s work. MOCA Curator Philipp Kaiser will organize the exhibition at MOCA and will work on Environments; MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel will focus on Kaprow’s work from the ‘50s; Paul McCarthy, artist and long-time friend of Kaprow, will consult on the reinventions of a selection of Happenings; Andrew Perchuk, Assistant Director for Contemporary Programs and Research at the Getty Research Institute, will focus on materials from the Kaprow Archive in the Getty Research Library’s Special Collections. Environments will be reinvented by John Baldessari and Skylar Haskard, Allen Ruppersberg, and Barbara T. Smith. A special project by Suzanne Lacy with Peter Kirby and Michael Rotundi will emphasize the role of experience in Kaprow's work.

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