Poster / flyer published in conjunction with happening held March 22 - 27, 1961. Recto features drawing by Kaprow with verso contains text announcing the work.
"In one of the more sinister examples [of Kaprow''''s Happenings], A Spring Happening (1961), the small audience was packed into a narrow crate with slits cut at eye level through which could be seen, among other things, a nude and nervous young woman being chased by a spotlight. Unexpected events, at best partially visible from inside the dark crate, were triggered by flashing lights or sudden noises. Heavy objects were dropped on the low roof of the crate; a giant industrial fan blocked the exit. The audience was trapped until the finale, when, just in time, the walls came crashing down. This piece is often discussed in relation to the notion of ''''rebirth''''—a mythic, even epiphanic reading of a piece in which the audience, cued by lights, bells, bangs, giant fans, and so on, is shunted through a sequence of alogical, non-matrixed, and compartmental events—an experiential maze. Attendees recall the smell of fear—Kaprow himself admits he was interested in this as an element. The imagery— no, the actuality—of confinement, as well as the assaultive violence of the audience''''s "liberation" by a roaring lawnmower, has as much to do with behaviorist experiments or with the imagery of the Holocaust as it does with any notion of ''''rebirth.'''' -- Judith Rodenbeck, "Madness and Method: Before Theatricality," published in Grey Room, no. 13 (Fall 2003), pp. 59.