Hoffman, J. and J. Jonas. Perform (Thames & Hudson, 2005).

Entrance on Performance (and other complications) P.11-32

• P.11 'The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible.' Allan Kaprow.
• P.15 In contrast to theatre, performance art does not present the illusion of events, but rather presents actual events as art.
• She [RoseLee Goldberg] moves on to Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism and the Bauhaus as a chain of art movements that developed a multidisciplinary approach to art and the world at large, at whose core we can discover a common fascination for provisional artistic articulations going beyond traditional divisions between art and audience. (Reference: Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present (1979))
• P.17 Allan Kaprow called 'Happenings' in which the audience was asked to participate directly.
• Kaprow's Happenings foreshadowed performance art in various ways, as they brought together a set of attributes unknown in art of that time. They were freely planned, provisional and spontaneous artistic events that directly related to everyday life. In particular, the desire to locate, explore and bridge the gap between art and life was key to Kaprow's artistic and theoretical inquiries.
• His (Kaprow's) overall approach, and especially his Happenings, are central to the development of performance and visual art in general, as they prefigured a new understanding in the relationship between art and life that would become ore ad more visible in art works created in subsequent decades -art that would begin to observe, interpret and engage with the social, cultural and political circumstances of the world it was made for and exposed to.