How To Make A Happening

Silkscreened cover with photo from Allan Kaprow's happening "Household", Cornell University, 1964.

In 1957 Alan Kaprow decided to try out the possibility that the "action" of Action Painting was a ritual act of creation, not just an incidental frenzy of movement that produced white canvases. That decision effectively ended his growing career as a painter. Since then he has given to the world a word: the Happening. From Murray the K's Radio program to the Revlon commercials, to peace marches and sit-ins, to the campaigns of politicians - that word seems to have satisfied a need to evoke the zest, freakishness and game of the life around us. Kaprow himself finds the Cape Kennedy rocket launchings among the most powerful quasi-Happenings. And one embittered cynic recently compared the war in Viet Nam to a "Happening gone out of control".
(Excerpt from the liner notes)