Allan Kaprow (1927-2006)

Allan Kaprow is best known as "the Happener", for he was the artist who came up with the "Happenings", a new art form he started in the late 1950's and 1960's which had a group of artists join in and it's became a new movement of the art during that time. The "Happenings" is a form of art in which intermedia performances involving groups of participants; it is to what Kaprow had described as "a game, an adventure, a number of activities engaged in by participants for the sake of playing." The "Happenings" allow the artist to experiment with body motion, recorded sounds, written and spoken texts, and even smells. Kaprow used art as a way to help our understanding of human psychology, sociology, aesthetics, and politics. His work had become a formative influence on Fluxus, Installation Art and Performance Art, which could be seen everywhere in the art world today.

One of Allan Kaprow's most well-known piece was in 1961, when he filled the walled-in backyard of the Martha Jackson Gallery with car tires and objects wrapped in black tarpaper. Visitors were invited to climb on the tires and move them around. He called it “Yard.”