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.