Experiments in the Everyday: Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts--Events, Objects, Documents

In pairing Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts, Experiments in the Everyday offers a critical examination of a key sequence in the development of contemporary art practices. The shift from form to process embraced by these artists, who were at the forefront of the 1960s avant-garde, made a lasting contribution to advanced art practices in the latter half of the century. Benjamin Buchloh, in his essay on Watts, addresses the relation between advanced forms of fetishization in consumer culture and the artistic responses given by Watts and his Fluxus colleagues. Judith Rodenbeck's essay, a close reading of textual and photographic aspects of Kaprow's production, provides a new model for approaching happenings and event structures and their relation to contemporaneous art. Robert E. Haywood examines postwar artistic production and Kaprow's work in relation to the critique of capital. Also included are an inteview with the two artists by Sidney Simon and one with Watts by Larry Miller.