This happening was commissioned by Florida State University for the Eighteenth Annual Symposium at the Ringling Museum of Art, in Sarasota, Florida, 1–4 February 1965. In this score, Kaprow sets up an equivalence between natural and social cycles. In the mid-1960s, Kaprow engaged with structural anthropology and the study of ritual, and in his notes for the Soap briefing, he even went so far as to call it an “archaic purification rite,” seemingly without irony. But in asking student participants to urinate and bury one another in sand while naked, Kaprow violated fundamental taboos. As a result, the happening was canceled. Nevertheless, a graduate student named Robert Carter decided to realize the score, and wrote a letter to Kaprow about his experience.
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Handwritten page of notes for
Soap (fall 1965)
Allan Kaprow’s clipping of Clyde Burnett,
“History of Photography Is Reviewed,” likely
printed in the
Sarasota Herald-Tribune (1965)
Notice of cancelation of Allan Kaprow’s
Soap (1965)
Letter from Robert Carter, a graduate student in
painting at Florida State University, to Allan
Kaprow (ca. 1965)
Clipping of a tidal chart of waves at Sarasota
Bay, from Soap (1 February 1965)
Program for Florida State University’s
Eighteenth Annual Symposium, which included
Kaprow’s Soap (1–4 February 1965)
Notes to Soap (February 1965)
Score for Soap in the form of a poster
(1964–65)
585
| Title | Three differently formatted scores for Soap |
| Maker | Allan Kaprow (American, 1927–2006) |
| Date | December 1964 |
| Type | score |
| Location | Getty Research Institute, Allan Kaprow Papers, 980063, box 9, folder 6 |
Related
Cite
Kaprow, Allan. Three differently formatted scores for
Soap, December 1964. Getty Research
Institute, Allan Kaprow Papers, 980063, box 9, folder
6. 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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