Allan Kaprow: Art as Life

published Mar 14, 2008
ends Jun 30, 2008
Allan Kaprow Art as Life
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) presents Allan Kaprow- Art as Life, the first major retrospective of Allan Kaprow (1927-2006), one of the most influential artists of the postwar era.

On view at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA March 23, 2008-June 30, 2008, the exhibition is a thought-provoking examination of a prolific and innovative career that spanned more than 50 years.

Beginning with figurative paintings from the late 1940s, the exhibition traces the development of Kaprow's oeuvre through works from the mid-1950s which he called Action Collages and eventually led to the creation of all-encompassing Environments.

Integral to the exhibition are reinventions of Kaprow's unprecedented Happenings of the late 1950s to mid-1960s in which events replaced objects as the focus of the artwork and the spectator played a pivotal role in the realization of the work.

Having held faculty positions at the California Institute of the Arts and the University of California, San Diego, Kaprow had a particularly strong connection to the Southern California contemporary art scene and a profound impact on his students.