Phd student Laura Routledge presents her work "Unframing the Work of Art: Commerce and Popular Culture in Allan Kaprow's Happenings". The seminar is arranged by the English research seminar and the research area Languages, literature and Culture. All interested are welcome!
For this seminar, Laura will be taking the helm, presenting the third chapter of her ongoing PhD thesis. The chapter looks at the way in which Allan Kaprow's Happenings Project engaged with the question of the relationship between art and the burgeoning mass and commercial culture of 1960s America. This discussion takes place in the context of a wider argument that Kaprow's Happenings can be read as an investigation into the way in which the category “art" was defined, understood and functioned in his society, and an exploration of possible alternatives to this dominant definition.