Fluxus at Rutgers University - The First "happenings"

The First "happenings"

Segal hosted annual picnics for his New York art friends. It was at one of these that Kaprow first coined the term Happening, for an impromptu artistic event, in the Spring of 1957. ‘Happening’ first appeared in print in the Winter 1958 issue of the Rutgers undergraduate literary magazine, ‘’Anthologist’’. The form was imitated and the term was adopted by artists across the United States, Germany, and Japan. Jack Kerouac referred to Kaprow as “the Happenings man,” and an ad showing a woman floating in outer space declared, “I dreamt I was in a happening in my Maidenform brassiere.”