This dissertation considers selected multimedia theater performances, commonly referred to as "Happenings" and presented between 1960 and 1965 by the Swedish-born American artist Claes Oldenburg, as works that operate outside established frameworks of style. Through analyses of the artist's writings, including the scripts for his performances, this study establishes the significance of experience as a key value within Oldenburg's art. In particular, I argue that Oldenburg intended for viewers to take away from the Happening a creatively enhanced, metamorphic kind of visual thinking, applicable to ordinary, perceptual experience. Motivated by what I term an "aesthetic of non-reconciliation," he aimed at undoing the hold of language on experience. The dissertation connects Oldenburg to the work of three very different thinkers, Antonin Artaud, John Cage, and Marshall McLuhan, all of whom strongly impacted the intellectual and artistic climate of the era. Thus, the dissertation proposes a new, historically grounded understanding of Oldenburg that anchors him firmly in the interdisciplinary arts of the 1950s and specifies the nature of his self-defined role as seeking to make the viewer see reality through the eyes of the artist. This study offers a detailed discussion of fourteen previously under-studied or neglected performances, including Snapshots from the City, Blackouts, Fotodeath, The Ray Gun Theater, and Moveyhouse.