Jo Spence at Space, London

Grupo de texto poético

Work submited by Grupo de texto poético, Spain, to the exhibition Arte Postal, Bienal de Sao Paulo, 1981, organized by Walter Zanini and Julio Plaza

Claes, what is a happening?

Robert Pincus-Witten: Claes, what is a happening?

Claes Oldenburg: A happening is a breaking down of the barriers between the arts, and something close to an actual experience. It should be a very free form, a very ambiguous and suggestive form. I think it's filled with unexplored and primitive possibilities. I like it to be that way - like it to be as unpredictable as possible.

…  I think the happening is a potential work of art. I talk of it all the time as a composition or work of art. But maybe that’s not so important. Maybe it’s more important that it’s a certain experience: simply sitting and watching in an isolated way something that’s very familiar. I’d like to get away from the notion of a work of art as something outside of experience, something that is located in museums, something that is terribly precious. I’d like to think of a normal, natural experience in terms of a work of art. I don’t think the notion of the detached work of art – this aristocratic work of art – is a very useful notion anymore. People don’t want that. They suffer with that notion and they would prefer to have a redefinition of art in something closer to themselves.

… a Western audience has to have explanations. They really can’t watch anything for its own sake. They have to have an explanation first or a reason for watching it. They really don’t watch a thing. They follow an idea as it unravels, and everything represents the unravelling of an idea. The happening, as I practice it, creates a lot of discomfort for the audience. It’s an attempt to rattle them out of the notion that they are going to watch a play or an idea unfold. I try to make them uncomfortable to a certain degree, to make them bored to a certain degree, and to make them receptive to a new way of looking at things.

The Transformation of Daddy Warbucks: An interview with Claes Oldenburg by Robert Pincus-Witten 1963.