“My piece Rainforest IV was developed from ideas I had as early as 1965…. An offer came, which didn’t get realized…I was asked to make a proposal for a park in Washington. The idea was to have a sounding outdoor sculpture, so my mind began turning around. I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be wonderful if each sculpture sounded completely different from the other and the whole could be run by one machine . . . .'” – David Tudor
Posts tagged ‘John Cage’
Talking John Cage with David Platzker and Jon Hendricks
John Cage and the Northwest School
The first gallery of the exhibition There Will Never Be Silence: Scoring John Cage’s 4’33” contains works by John Cage’s contemporaries and influences, including such well-known names as Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Albers, Jasper Johns, Barnett Newman, and Robert Rauschenberg. Works by two lesser-known West Coast artists, Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, also occupy this space, pointing to Cage’s brief but seminal years living in Seattle.
Yoko Ono’s Secret Piece
Many of the works featured in the exhibition There Will Never Be Silence: Scoring John Cage’s 4’33” were created around 1960, as a generation of artists and students of John Cage reacted to the radical possibilities opened up by his 4’33”. The score had finally been published eight years after its first performance at Woodstock in 1952.
“Is This a Social Experiment?” Performing John Cage
Twice daily, from February 7 to 20, MoMA staff and invited artists performed John Cage’s score 4’33” in an area just outside the exhibition There Will Never Be Silence: Scoring John Cage’s 4’33”. Over the course of those two weeks, 28 renditions of 4’33” were performed by 20 staff members and eight guest artists.
Constructed Situations: Communicating the Influence of John Cage
Through examining four pieces in The Museum of Modern Art’s collection, one can better understand how John Cage’s embrace of indeterminacy can be traced in the period following 4’33” (1952) and in more recent years, and how these later works play with the concepts of chance and the ephemeral in different ways.
The Poetry of Silence: Jackson Mac Low’s Drawing-Asymmetry
If you visit MoMA’s exhibition There Will Never Be Silence: Scoring John Cage’s 4’33”, you will encounter a suite of enigmatic drawings by Fluxus-affiliated poet Jackson Mac Low, comprising swirling letters and seemingly nonsensical combinations of words. Although they seem like meaningless scribbles, the words are actually legible and meant to be read aloud.
Composing Silence: John Cage and Black Mountain College
John Cage first visited Black Mountain College, in Asheville, North Carolina, in April 1948, while on his way to the West Coast with choreographer Merce Cunningham. Though he only stayed in Asheville for a few days—premiering his composition Sonatas and Interludes—the visit proved formative.
Reading John Cage
Though the exhibition There Will Never Be Silence: Scoring John Cage’s 4′33" primarily draws upon works from MoMA’s collection, with a few key outside loans, the voice of John Cage himself was instrumental in guiding the selection of artists, and, in some cases, the specific works on view.
Silence Is Not What It Used to Be
In an era when no cell phones or other digital devices existed, silence was a more common facet of everyday life. Perhaps attention spans were longer, distractions fewer, and maybe the pace of world was slower. It’s nice to be romantic about a period before communication was measured in 140 characters, when the simple act of writing a letter was a considered an opportunity to put one’s thoughts into words, often by hand, in ink on paper.
If you are interested in reproducing images from The Museum of Modern Art web site, please visit the Image Permissions page (www.moma.org/permissions). For additional information about using content from MoMA.org, please visit About this Site (www.moma.org/site).
© Copyright 2016 The Museum of Modern Art