Presents a study of the two important artists of the twentieth century that links the art practices of Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson in their attempts to test the limits of art - both what it is and where it is.

List of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction Limits to Growth: The Sixties and Early Seventies The Continental European Perspective Allan Kaprow and the Limits to Painting "Oedipal--just for fun": Allan Kaprow and Art History Environments "The Legacy of Jackson Pollock" The Hansa Gallery Art and the Division of Labor: 18 Happenings in 6 Parts My 18 Happenings in 6 Parts The Happeners' Bodies A Service for the Dead Calling The Triumph of Pop Art The Nonentry of Happenings into the Art Museum "Happenings in the New York Scene" Claes Oldenburg versus Allan Kaprow Naturalism and Modernism Performing Architecture Site Specificity Fluids The Limits to Sculpture: Robert Smithson and Earth Art The Excursions: Critiquing Minimalism "The Crystal Land" "The Monuments of Passaic" "Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan" Hotel Palenque The Triumph of Minimal Art The Sculpture Boom and the Case of Michael Fried Robert Smithson and Marcel Duchamp Dan Graham and the Legacy of Robert Smithson Site and Nonsite Robert Smithson as the Artistic Advisor to the Dallas--Fort Worth Airport A Nonsite (An Indoor Earthwork) Limits Earthworks Entropy Partially Buried Woodshed Spiral Jetty Political Landscape Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer The Military Sublime: Earth Art and the War in Vietnam "Cultural Confinement" Broken Circle/Spiral Hill and the Land Reclamation Projects The Limits to Art History Texts, Ephemeral Media, and Technical Reproductions in Art Scholarship Conclusion Notes Bibliography Art Credits Index

"Dr. Ursprung’s exquisite research yields valuable knowledge concerning two of art history’s most underserved artists, Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson, to propose that the assumed contiguity of traditional art history has marginalized both Kaprow’s Happenings and Smithson’s oeuvre. Moreover, the author reveals the importance of photography and writing in both of the artist’s works, and how their expansion of the artwork as textual and discursive has been thus far ignored by traditional art historian definitions." Mark Cameron Boyd, Professor of Art Theory, Corcoran College of Art + Design "Although few post-1945 American artists more nimbly pushed the limits of art than Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson, their multivalent practices in which writing figured prominently seldom have been considered in relation to each other. In this scrupulously researched, methodologically heterodox, and highly readable book, Philip Ursprung snaps off the handcuffs “happenings” and “earthworks” and allows his subjects to walk free so as to juxtapose their achievements and present the most nuanced and illuminating account of them we have to date. The result is a landmark study of the reconfiguration of the environment of art and a fearless contribution to understanding the present, not least of all the role of institutions and historians in monopolizing cultural meanings." Edward Dimendberg, author of Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Architecture after Images