Allan Kaprow Quotes

Artist refers to a person, willfully enmeshed in a dilemma of categories, who performs as if none of them existed.

The young artist of today need no longer say 'I am a painter,' or 'a poet,' or 'a dancer.' He is simply an 'artist.' All of life will be open to him.

The young artist... will discover out of ordinary things the meaning of ordinariness. He will not try to make them extraordinary. Only their real meaning will be stated.

Our advanced art approaches a fragile but marvelous life, one that maintains itself by a mere thread, melting into an elusive, changeable configuration, the surroundings, the artist, his work and everyone who comes to it.

The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible.

This everyday world affects the way art is created as much as it conditions its response.

I am not so sure whether what we do now is art or something not quite art. If I call it art, it is because I wish to avoid the endless arguments some other name would bring forth.

In this context of achievement-and-death, artist who make Happenings are living out the purest melodrama. Their activity embodies the myth of nonsuccess, for Happenings cannot be sold and taken home; they can only be supported.

Some of us will probably become famous. It will be an ironic fame fashioned largely by those who have never seen our work.

A walk down 14th street is more amazing than any masterpiece of art.

Objects of every sort are materials for the new art: paint, food, chairs, electric and neon lights, smoke, water, old socks, a dog, movies, a thousand other things which will be discovered by the present generation of artists.

Doing life consciously was a compelling notion to me.