A landmark nude body-painting event happened with its own audience unaware of its novelty

Evidence

Flashbulbs popped as bodies melded. “The hippie crowd, although enjoying themselves, took it all for granted,” Smith wrote. “They didn’t realize that they had been watching an East Coast First, a totally nude body painting event in public.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1174

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the book’s thesis about how scenes normalize their own breakthroughs; audience unawareness of firsts echoes later claims about cultural amnesia.
• SHARE: Great for someone interested in Kusama or the history of performance/nudity in art — the quotable detail that the crowd didn’t know they’d witnessed a landmark.