Allan Kaprow's "happenings" and "environments" were the precursors to contemporary performance art, and his essays are some of the most thoughtful, provocative, and influential of his generation. His sustained inquiry into the paradoxical relationship of art to life and into the nature of meaning itself is brought into focus in this newly expanded collection of his most significant writings. A new preface and two new additional essays published in the 1990s bring this valuable collection up to date.

In early October 1959, thirty-two-year-old Allan Kaprow presented a performance piece entitled "18 Happenings in 6 Parts." This unique conjunction of visual, aural, and physical events, performed for an intimate art world audience by his friends and colleagues, would change the course of art history. The genre of artwork that evolved from this debut would become known as Happenings. Author Mildred Glimcher, an art historian, author, and close observer of contemporary art for more than fifty years, provides a vivid and comprehensive look not only at the events, but also at the culture and society that surrounded it. This new volume provides a comprehensive look at this revolutionary art form. Prepared in conjunction with an exhibition at the Pace Gallery in New York, it focuses on the years that saw the movement's birth in New York and Provincetown, Mass., and the artists who made the genre a legend: Red Grooms, Allan Kaprow, Robert Whitman, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Simone Forti, Carolee Schneemann. Together, they created a new and outrageous art form with an "anything goes" attitude, one whose influence is still felt within the contemporary art world. Glimcher visits the formative years of the movement in great detail, describing each performance piece in words and photographs. The radical nature of the time and the works is evidenced by Red Grooms's The Burning Building, Claes Oldenburg's Ray Gun Spex, Jim Dine's A Shining Bed, and many more. Happenings is heavily illustrated with photographs from the era, many drawn from a previously unpublished cache by Robert McElroy.

This title documents the burgeoning eco art movement from A to Z, presenting a panorama of artistic responses to environmental concerns, from Ant Farms anti-consumer antics in the 1970s to Marina Zurkows 2007 animation that anticipates the havoc wreaked upon the planet by global warming.

This new interpretation of the structure and meaning of the Happenings produced by Allan Kaprow (1927-2006) and Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929) in the late 1950s and 1960s sheds light on the context, theoretical framework, and working practice unique to this groundbreaking artistic form. Drawing on extensive archival research and including never-before-published drawings by Oldenburg, Robert E. Haywood describes the dialogue - at times contentious - between these two artists about the direction of the Happenings and modern art in general. Through a comprehensive analysis of these often overlooked works, it becomes clear that the Happenings--born in the midst of Cold War tensions and an increased uneasiness with the direction society was taking--challenged the traditional definitions of art in innovative new ways and were a critical component in the development of the art of the 20th century.

This comprehensive international bibliography is the first to attempt documentation of this diverse field, covering the history of Artist's Performance. It focuses on its early twentieth-century antecedents in such movements as Futurism, Dada, Russian Constructivism, and the Bauhaus as well as its peak period in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s with such developments as Gutai, Fluxus, Viennese Actionism, Situationism, and Guerrilla Art Action. Major emphasis is also given to sources on 115 individual performance artists and groups. More than 3700 entries document print and media materials dating from 1914 to 1992. Organized for maximum accessibility, the sources are also extensively cross-referenced and are indexed by artist, subject, title, and author. Three appendices identify reference works, libraries, and archives, and addenda material not found in the book text, and two others list artists by country and by group or collective.

Site-Specific Art charts the development of an experimental art form in an experimental way. Nick Kaye traces the fascinating historical antecedents of today's installation and performance art, while also assembling a unique documentation of contemporary practice around the world. The book is divided into individual analyses of the themes of space, materials, site, and frames. These are interspersed by specially commissioned documentary artwork from some of the world's foremost practitioners and artists working today. This interweaving of critique and creativity has never been achieved on this scale before. Site-Specific Art investigates the relationship of architectural theory to an understanding of contemporary site related art and performance, and rigorously questions how such works can be documented. The artistic processes involved are demonstrated through entirely new primary articles from: * Meredith Monk * Station House Opera * Brith Gof * Forced Entertainment. This volume is an astonishing contribution to debates around experimental cross-arts practice.

Community Performance: A Reader is the first book to provide comprehensive teaching materials for this significant part of the theatre studies curriculum. It brings together core writings and critical approaches to community performance work, presenting practices in the UK, USA, Australia and beyond. Offering a comprehensive anthology of key writings in the vibrant field of community performance, spanning dance, theatre and visual practices, this Reader uniquely combines classic writings from major theorists and practitioners such as Augusto Boal, Paolo Freire, Dwight Conquergood and Jan Cohen Cruz, with newly commissioned essays that bring the anthology right up to date with current practice. This book can be used as a stand-alone text, or together with its companion volume, Community Performance: An Introduction, to offer an accessible and classroom-friendly introduction to the field of community performance.