This review of the May 1960 concert at the Pratt Institute, which George Brecht saved in his notebook, testifies that the performance culture in which Brecht participated was seen as radically multidisciplinary and chaotic, even anarchic, and highlights Allan Kaprow and Al Hansen as the movement’s main apologists. Notably, this event took place in a time before the differences between “happenings” and the more focused minimalism of Brecht’s events had been parsed. The reviewer, Diane de Bonneval, appropriately credits John Cage as an instrumental figure, although she misdates the origin of happenings; historians now agree that the first happening took place under Cage’s direction at Black Mountain College in August 1952.
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| Title | “New School’s ‘Happenings’ Proves to be ‘Hellzapoppin’-Beatnik Style,” New York World-Telegram and The Sun, reprinted in George Brecht—Notebooks, ed. Dieter Daniels and Hermann Braun, vol. 5 (Cologne: Walther König, 1998), 89 |
| Maker | Diane de Bonneval |
| Date | 3 May 1960 |
| Type | press clipping |
| Location | Getty Research Institute, item 92-B17341, vol. 5 |
Cite
De Bonneval, Diane. “New School’s ‘Happenings’ Proves
to be ‘Hellzapoppin’-Beatnik Style,”
New York World-Telegram and The Sun,
reprinted in George Brecht—Notebooks, ed.
Dieter Daniels and Hermann Braun, vol. 5 (Cologne:
Walther König, 1998), 89, 3 May 1960. Getty Research
Institute, item 92-B17341, vol. 5. In
The Scores Project: Experimental Notation in Music,
Art, Poetry, and Dance, 1950–1975, ed. Michael Gallope, Natilee Harren, and John
Hicks. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2025.
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