[Lette Eisenhauer Descending from Giant "Mountain" Construction, After Performance of "The Courtyard," A Happening by Allan Kaprow, New York City]

1962

Not on view

These photographs of Kaprow's The Courtyard (1962) were made by Lawrence Shustak, a chronicler of downtown bohemia who happened upon the scene with photographer and darkroom sharer Robert Frank. Composed of discordant noise, circling bicyclists, tires swinging from windows, and showers of spot-lit, glittering tin foil, The Courtyard was a modern-day fable (set in a hotel for transients on Bleecker Street) showing the ascension of a goddess in the guise of a teenage girl, dressed in a nightgown and carrying a transistor radio blaring the latest hits. During the piece, she slowly made her way through the audience and climbed a ladder up a giant mountainlike sculpture in the middle of the courtyard. Striking cheesecake poses for a pair of paparazzi on a mattress (the fan attaining the immortality of the starlet), the girl was then swallowed up by another mountain descending from the rooftop-a deus ex machina for our media age.

These three images in this group were reproduced in Allan Kaprow's influential compendium of avant-garde performance from around the world entitled Assemblage-Environments-Happenings (1966).

Artwork Details

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References

Title: [Lette Eisenhauer Descending from Giant "Mountain" Construction, After Performance of "The Courtyard," A Happening by Allan Kaprow, New York City]
Artist: Lawrence N. Shustak (American, 1926–2003)
Date: 1962
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: 23.9 x 15.9 cm (9 7/16 x 6 1/4 in.)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Purchase, Anonymous Gift, 2002
Object Number: 2002.336
Curatorial Department: Photographs

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