Allan Kaprow: Quotes about art

“A walk down 14th street is more amazing than any masterpiece of art.”

Allan Kaprow

[[http://streets2k5.albuscav.us/upstage_guide.pdfStreets 2K5 international festival Of Street Art (May 2005) p. 19

Art

“[something like] a badly constructed or repaired motor, or like that wonderful event of Tinguely's, where he made a huge contraption in the backyard of the Museum of Modern Art called 'Homage to New York', which was a machine that destroyed itself in various humorous ways. It's that breakdown system along with slippages that you can't predict I find most interesting, not because I want to make a point about society as being a broken down system or that all life is entropic — I don't, but rather that its process is unforeseeable.”

Allan Kaprow

In an interview with Robert C. Morgan, 1991; in the 'Journal of Contemporary Art, 4', no. 2, p. 56-69
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MqsWqBX4wQ

Life , Art , Way

“Pollock.... left us [c. 1958] at the point where we must be preoccupied with and even dazzled by the space and objects of our everyday life, either our bodies, clothes, rooms, or, if need be, the vastness of Forty-Second Street [New York].... Objects of every sorts are materials for the new art, paints, chairs, food, electric and neon-lights, smoke, water, old socks, a dog, movies, a thousand other things which will be discovered by the present generation of artists.... All will become materials for this new concrete art.”

Allan Kaprow

In his essay 'The legacy of Jackson Pollock', published in 'ARTnews', Fall of 1958; as quoted by Christina Bryan Rosenberger, in 'Drawing the Line: The Early Work of Agnes Martin', Univ. of California Press, July 2016, p 121
this essay of 1958 became more or less an art-manifesto for the generation American artists after Abstract Expressionism

Life , Food , Dogs , Art

“Around late 1961 to 1962, right around there, somewhat unevenly and sort of spottily, I began to do pieces that were based upon a short text of actions that only involved a handful of friends or students at some specific site — a site that was not marked as an art site, a ravine somewhere, or a roadway, or somebody's apartment, or the telephone, that is, the places of everyday life, not designated as sites of art. And the work itself, the action, the kind of participation, was as remote from anything artistic as the site was.... I chose the word Happening from its normal language usage somewhat earlier for that philosophical reason, but I didn't categorize that as lifelike until much later. But in fact, looking back, that's exactly what Happening meant.”

Allan Kaprow

In an interview with Robert C. Morgan, 1991; in the 'Journal of Contemporary Art, 4', no. 2, p. 56-69

Life , Art

“The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible.”

Allan Kaprow

'Transfiguration of the Commonplace' by Anna Dezeuze in Variant 22 (Spring 2005) http://www.variant.randomstate.org/22texts/Dezeuze.html.

Life , Art

“The problem with artlike art, or even doses of artlike art that still linger in lifelike art, is that it overemphasizes the discourse within art.”

Allan Kaprow

in 'Journal of Contemporary Art', Inc. accessed 2008-04-28 http://www.jca-online.com/kaprow.html

Art , Problem