Kaprow's Yard

Hauser & Wirth New York will open in September with YARD, a seminal Environment first made in 1961 by Allan Kaprow, the American painter, assemblagist and pioneer of performance art known as the inventor of ‘Happenings.’

"Life is much more interesting than art," he wrote. "The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible." Kaprow staged interactive events within and beyond the traditional museum and gallery context.

More than forty years ago, he filled the backyard of a Manhattan townhouse with rubber auto tires heaped randomly for viewers to climb in and around. That work was Yard and the townhouse, then home to the Martha Jackson Gallery, was located at 32 East 69th Street, the address soon to be Hauser & Wirth New York.