Skip to main content
University of California Press
Cart(opens in new window)
Download Cover Image(opens in new window)Download Flyer Google Books Preview(opens in new window)

Allan Kaprow, Robert Smithson, and the Limits to Art

by Philip Ursprung (Author), Fiona Elliott (Translator)
Hardcover
Price: $85.00 / £71.00
Publication Date: May 2013
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 342
ISBN: 9780520245419
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 37 b/w photographs
Endowments:
Request an Exam or Desk Copy(opens in new window)RightsLink(opens in new window)
Recommend to your Library (PDF)(opens in new window)Rights and Permissions

About the Book

This innovative study of two of the most important artists of the twentieth century links the art practices of Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson in their attempts to test the limits of art--both what it is and where it is. Ursprung provides a sophisticated yet accessible analysis placing the two artists firmly in the art world of the 1960s as well as in the art historical discourse of the following decades. Although their practices were quite different they both extended the studio and gallery into desert landscapes abandoned warehouses industrial sites train stations and other spaces. Ursprung bolsters his argument with substantial archival research and sociological and economic models of expansion and limits.

About the Author

Philip Ursprung is Swiss National Science Foundation Professor for Art History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Visiting Curator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and an elected member of the Swiss Federal Commission for the Arts.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction
Limits to Growth: The Sixties and Early Seventies
The Continental European Perspective

Allan Kaprow and the Limits to Painting
“Oedipal—just for fun”: Allan Kaprow and Art History
Environments
“The Legacy of Jackson Pollock”
The Hansa Gallery
Art and the Division of Labor: 18 Happenings in 6 Parts
My 18 Happenings in 6 Parts
The Happeners’ Bodies
A Service for the Dead
Calling
The Triumph of Pop Art
The Nonentry of Happenings into the Art Museum
“Happenings in the New York Scene”
Claes Oldenburg versus Allan Kaprow
Naturalism and Modernism
Performing Architecture
Site Specificity
Fluids

The Limits to Sculpture: Robert Smithson and Earth Art
The Excursions: Critiquing Minimalism
“The Crystal Land”
“The Monuments of Passaic”
“Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan”
Hotel Palenque
The Triumph of Minimal Art
The Sculpture Boom and the Case of Michael Fried
Robert Smithson and Marcel Duchamp
Dan Graham and the Legacy of Robert Smithson
Site and Nonsite
Robert Smithson as the Artistic Advisor to the Dallas–Fort Worth Airport
A Nonsite (An Indoor Earthwork)
Limits
Earthworks
Entropy
Partially Buried Woodshed
Spiral Jetty
Political Landscape
Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer
The Military Sublime: Earth Art and the War in Vietnam
“Cultural Confinement”
Broken Circle/Spiral Hill and the Land Reclamation Projects

The Limits to Art History
Texts Ephemeral Media and Technical Reproductions in Art Scholarship
Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Art Credits
Index

Reviews

"Dr. Ursprung’s exquisite research yields valuable knowledge concerning two of art history’s most underserved artists Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson to propose that the assumed contiguity of traditional art history has marginalized both Kaprow’s Happenings and Smithson’s oeuvre. Moreover the author reveals the importance of photography and writing in both of the artist’s works and how their expansion of the artwork as textual and discursive has been thus far ignored by traditional art historian definitions."
Mark Cameron Boyd Professor of Art Theory Corcoran College of Art + Design

"Although few post-1945 American artists more nimbly pushed the limits of art than Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson their multivalent practices in which writing figured prominently seldom have been considered in relation to each other. In this scrupulously researched methodologically heterodox and highly readable book Philip Ursprung snaps off the handcuffs “happenings” and “earthworks” and allows his subjects to walk free so as to juxtapose their achievements and present the most nuanced and illuminating account of them we have to date. The result is a landmark study of the reconfiguration of the environment of art and a fearless contribution to understanding the present not least of all the role of institutions and historians in monopolizing cultural meanings."
Edward Dimendberg author of Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Architecture after Images