Early avant-garde performances had tiny, erratic audiences of fellow artists

Evidence

The Burning Building presented Kerouac’s “wild self-believing individuality” for its own sake. The piece lasted ten minutes; the opening night audience of neighborhood friends demanded four encores. Audiences varied over the nine performances. One gala night, the sculptor Claes Oldenburg led thirty people down from his opening at the Judson Gallery. But only Oldenburg’s buddy, painter Jim Dine, showed up a few days later on a snowy weeknight for a performance that had to be canceled after irate neighbors complained. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 62

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the reader’s thesis in ‘Grafting & Growth’ about material conditions enabling invention: tiny artist-only audiences meant zero market pressure to succeed, enabling radical experimentation. Contrast with the ‘On Sacrifice’ piece’s note that ritual spectacle requires mass audience.