Total Art

Fülszöveg

THE WOr.LD OF ART
Total Art
Environments, Happenings, and Performance Adrian Henri 1 50 plates 30 in color
Claes Oldenburg proposed to cover Manhattan with a giant ironing-board; Allan Kaprow melted ice palaces in city streets; on the last day of Edinburgh's Festival Drama Conference, a nude lady was wheeled across a balcony on a trolley. These awkward, original images are among the most important in twentieth-century art, yet they are the least known. They are part of a movement that Adrian Henri calls "Total Art." Environments, happenings, performance art-all endeavor to bypass reason and appeal directly to unconscious impulses.
Since World War II, artists have made increasing use of technological media, and, in their search for new art forms, havecollaborated with filmmakers, dancers, actors, musicians, and other artists, to stage controversial, often outrageous and hilarious, seemingly spontaneous public gatherings. Happenings, first seen in New York in the early 1 960s,... Tovább

Fülszöveg

THE WOr.LD OF ART
Total Art
Environments, Happenings, and Performance Adrian Henri 1 50 plates 30 in color
Claes Oldenburg proposed to cover Manhattan with a giant ironing-board; Allan Kaprow melted ice palaces in city streets; on the last day of Edinburgh's Festival Drama Conference, a nude lady was wheeled across a balcony on a trolley. These awkward, original images are among the most important in twentieth-century art, yet they are the least known. They are part of a movement that Adrian Henri calls "Total Art." Environments, happenings, performance art-all endeavor to bypass reason and appeal directly to unconscious impulses.
Since World War II, artists have made increasing use of technological media, and, in their search for new art forms, havecollaborated with filmmakers, dancers, actors, musicians, and other artists, to stage controversial, often outrageous and hilarious, seemingly spontaneous public gatherings. Happenings, first seen in New York in the early 1 960s, use live performers without the logical structure of drama, in an attempt to break down the customary distinctions between life and art. Environments such as Ed Kienholz^ Back Seat Dodge 38 surround the visitor-spectator and monopolize his attention. In performance art, a movement that appeared in Europe with the work of Yves Klein and Joseph Beuys, the artist himself becomes an actor.
These revolutionary approaches have challenged the traditional barriers between the plastic and the performing arts and continue to raise new questions about the future of art.
"Anyone who still doesn't know what a happening is after reading this book -one of its joys the 150 illustrations, 30 of them in colour - must be blind indeed" - Cyril Connolly, The Sunday Times of London
Adrian Henri, poet, writer, singer, and painter, is President of the Liverpool Academy of Arts. His previously published works include an autobiography, Mersey Sound, and several novels. Vissza