Last project between Allan Kaprow and John Gibson Gallery
 
Beauty Parlor 2, 1993
John Gibson Gallery and Trident Group, New York
18 x 24 inches
Edition of 93
 
Text from Poster:
 
Beauty Parlor (2) is a reinvention of 2 merged, untitled Environments presented at the Hansa Gallery in 1958. It is quite different from its prototypes, occupying 3 floors of a large, active printing firm in an industrial section of Manhattan. The 1958 Environments were installed in the neutral space of an art gallery on Central Park South. For another, Beauty Parlor is inherently participatory. The 1958 works were certainly space-filling, but they only tentatively engaged the visitors in specific actions such as turning on an electric fan or moving some objects around. They were mostly intact without such moves. This Environment can’t function without focused participation. Beauty Parlor has been invented 3 times in the past: as Fresh Air at the Museum Am Ostwall, Dortmund, 1986; as Beauty Parlor (1) at The Fondazione Mudima, Milan, 1990; and as Dead End at Studio Morra, Naples, 1991. Indeed the idea from the start was to have each Environment change whenever it might be remade in the future. So, in the majority of cases, I have reinvented more or less freely. That way, the changes were always fresh. Today, when there is a revival of interest among historians in the innovations of the late 1950s and 1960s, participation and reinvention are ways to keep history in the present. –ALLAN KAPROW