Allan Kaprow was an American artist who was a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art, developing environments he then called the areas 'Happenings' and described them as a place for "a number of activities that are engaged in by viewers and participates purely for the sake of playing." Eventually Kaprow changed these Performance 'Happenings' pieces into 'Activities' that could be enjoyed physically by multiple people - as a way of studying normal human activity.
Most children would love the idea of creating a huge pile of car tyres and being invited to jump or climb on them - but Kaprow objective wasn't to create a play area, but to move art beyond the confines of traditional art materials and museums to make his work able to encourage involvement of the viewers to take the artists work into their own hands and reshape it as they please - thus breaking down the barriers between the viewer and his artwork, his work also was meant to connect the art and the environment.
Due this massive scale of and continually changing landscape within these environments, there is never clear beginning-middle-end structure and this is due to his perspective that the "line between art and life should be kept fluid and as indistinct as possible."
He called the areas where he had these tyres 'Happenings' and described them as a place for "a number of activities that are engaged in by viewers and participates purely for the sake of playing."
My Experience With Kaprow's Work
Last year I visited The Hepworth Gallery where the warehouse across from the gallery there was a Kaprow installation and I myself played and reshaped some areas of tyres to my own ideas and I had a much better understanding of his work after being apart of it.
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