He went on to study composition with John Cage in his class at the New School for Social Research, painting with Hans Hofmann, and art history with Meyer Schapiro.

[7] In it he demands a "concrete art" made of everyday materials such as "paint, chairs, food, electric and neon lights, smoke, water, old socks, a dog, movies."

One such work, titled Eighteen Happenings in Six Parts, involved an audience moving together to experience elements such as a band playing toy instruments, a woman squeezing an orange, and painters painting.

Kaprow's most famous happenings began around 1961 to 1962, when he would take students or friends out to a specific site to perform a small action.

However, the ritualistic nature of his happenings is nowhere better illustrated than in Eat (1964), which took place in a cave with irregular floors criss-crossed with puddles and streams.

As Canadian playwright Gary Botting described it, "The 'visitors' entered through an old door, and walked down a dark, narrow corridor and up steps to a platform illuminated by an ordinary light bulb.

In a small cave, entered only by climbing a ladder, a performer cut, salted and distributed boiled potatoes.

"[10] Botting noted that Eat appealed to all the senses and superadded to that was the rhythmic, repeated ticking of metronomes set at the pace of a human heartbeat, simulating ritualistic drumming.

The "Happening" allows the artist to experiment with body motion, recorded sounds, written and spoken texts, and even smells.

These "Happenings" use disposable elements like cardboard or cans making it cheaper on Kaprow to be able to change up his art piece every time.

He points out that their presentations in lofts, stores, and basements widens the concept of theater by destroying the barrier between audience and play and "demonstrating the organic connection between art and its environment."

In 1973 Allan Kaprow performed with Jannis Kounellis, Wolf Vostell, Robert Filliou, and Mario Merz in Berlin at the ADA - Aktionen der Avantgarde.

Other Ways" at the Fundacio Antoni Tapies in Barcelona: Toothbrushing Piece ("performed privately with friends"), and Pose ("Carrying chairs through the city.

[citation needed] Assemblage, Environments and Happenings (1966) presented the work of like-minded artists through both photographs and critical essays, and is a standard text in the field of performance art.

[16] In 2013, Dale Eisinger of Complex ranked Yard (1961) sixth in his list of the greatest performance art works, writing, "His first happenings engaged the audience in overwhelming, often playful ways.