Allan Kaprow’s Soap was commissioned by Florida State University for the Eighteenth Annual Symposium at the Ringling Museum of Art, 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, graduate student Robert Carter decided to realize the score, and wrote this letter to Kaprow about his experience. Carter describes his performance in psychedelic terms, as comparable to taking a strong dose of peyote.
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Three differently formatted scores for
Soap (December 1964)
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)
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)
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| Title | Letter from Robert Carter, a graduate student in painting at Florida State University, to Allan Kaprow |
| Date | ca. 1965 |
| Type | correspondence |
| Location | Getty Research Institute, Allan Kaprow Papers, 980063, box 9, folder 6 |
Related
Cite
Letter from Robert Carter, a graduate student in
painting at Florida State University, to Allan Kaprow,
ca. 1965. 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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