The Sōgetsu Art Center (SAC) was a Tokyo -based experimental art space. The center was established in 1958 and its activities ceased in 1971. It was founded by Sōfū Teshigahara , creator of the Sōgetsu-ryū (草月流) , a school of ikebana (Japanese floral art), that he founded in 1927. It was directed by Teshigahara's son, Hiroshi Teshigahara .
183-457: It is considered a major hub for post-war Japanese art , especially for experimental and avant-garde activities. The SAC was a pivotal venue for those involved in the phenomenon of Tokyo pop, whether Japanese or international. Events held there brought together musicians, visual artists, designers, critics and curators around multidisciplinary and collaborative events, on the margins of conventional art institutions. Activities at SAC converged towards
366-552: A Guggenheim Fellowship . After a 1949 performance at Carnegie Hall , New York, Cage received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation , which enabled him to make a trip to Europe, where he met composers such as Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez . More important was Cage's chance encounter with Morton Feldman in New York City in early 1950. Both composers attended a New York Philharmonic concert, where
549-492: A brush rather than a pen , and their familiarity with brush techniques has made them particularly sensitive to the values and aesthetics of painting. With the rise of popular culture in the Edo period , ukiyo-e , a style of woodblock prints, became a major form and its techniques were fine-tuned to create mass-produced, colorful pictures; in spite of painting's traditional pride of place, these prints proved to be instrumental in
732-486: A syllabary system for transcribing sounds and ideas (see kana ), and most were incapable of reading texts that employed Chinese ideographs ( kanji ). Thus, the Kegon Engi Emaki combines passages of text, written with a maximum of easily readable syllables, and illustrations that have the dialogue between characters written next to the speakers, a technique comparable to contemporary comic strips. The plot of
915-489: A European tour. From 1956 to 1961 Cage taught classes in experimental composition at The New School, and from 1956 to 1958 he also worked as an art director and designer of typography. Among his works completed during the last years of the decade were Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–58), a seminal work in the history of graphic notation , and Variations I (1958). Cage was affiliated with Wesleyan University and collaborated with members of its music department from
1098-587: A Korean peninsula, Buddhist icons were brought to Japan by Various immigrant groups. Particularly, the semi-seated Maitreya form was adapted into a highly developed Ancient Greek art style which was transmitted to Japan as evidenced by the Kōryū-ji Miroku Bosatsu and the Chūgū-ji Siddhartha statues. Many historians portray Korea as a mere transmitter of Buddhism. The Three Kingdoms, and particularly Baekje, were instrumental as active agents in
1281-431: A collaborative and horizontal approach: "I had always been involved with activities that mixed up and brought together various art forms. So the art center was something that really concretized what I had been thinking about for a while. One thing that I insisted on was that it wasn't going to be a place where I would call on artists and ask them to do things. I really wanted people to come here on their own, and find it to be
1464-403: A collection of Cage's lectures and writings on a wide variety of subjects, including the famous Lecture on Nothing that was composed using a complex time length scheme, much like some of Cage's music. Silence was Cage's first book of six but it remains his most widely read and influential. In the early 1960s Cage began his lifelong association with C.F. Peters Corporation . Walter Hinrichsen,
1647-406: A composer. The vow Cage gave, to dedicate his life to music, was apparently still important some 40 years later, when Cage "had no need for it [i.e. writing music]", he continued composing partly because of the promise he gave. Schoenberg's methods and their influence on Cage are well documented by Cage himself in various lectures and writings. Particularly well-known is the conversation mentioned in
1830-464: A computer algorithm that calculated numbers in a manner similar to throwing coins for the I Ching . Despite the fame Sonatas and Interludes earned him, and the connections he cultivated with American and European composers and musicians, Cage was quite poor. Although he still had an apartment at 326 Monroe Street (which he occupied since around 1946), his financial situation in 1951 worsened so much that while working on Music of Changes , he prepared
2013-479: A construction site, image of a clock, Coca-Cola bottles, tie painted gold, a worn-out pair of black leather shoes...) on a gold Japanese folding screen ( byōbu ), offered by Sōfū Teshigahara . The performance lasted more than four hours until the piece was finished, and most of the audience - including John Cage and Merce Cunningham - had already left, which was the trigger for the departure of Steve Paxton , Barbara Lloyd, Deborah Hay and Robert Rauschenberg from
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#17327837954112196-456: A copy of the I Ching —a Chinese classic text which describes a symbol system used to identify order in chance events. This version of the I Ching was the first complete English translation and had been published by Wolff's father, Kurt Wolff of Pantheon Books in 1950. The I Ching is commonly used for divination , but for Cage it became a tool to compose using chance. To compose a piece of music, Cage would come up with questions to ask
2379-409: A form of Vajrayana Buddhism, which he introduced into Japan in 806. At the core of Shingon worship is mandalas , diagrams of the spiritual universe, which then began to influence temple design. Japanese Buddhist architecture also adopted the stupa , originally an Indian architectural form , in its Chinese-style pagoda. The temples erected for this new sect were built in the mountains, far away from
2562-456: A group of performers, primarily artists affiliated with the SAC, to fulfill various actions. In The Pulse, the group performed mundane acts such as eating fruit and breaking objects. The recital concluded with a piece in which every performer stood on stage, and stared at a person in the audience until they established eye contact. Once they established eye contact, they selected a different person in
2745-492: A job washing walls at a YWCA (World Young Women's Christian Association) in Brooklyn . Cage's routine during that period was apparently very tiring, with just four hours of sleep on most nights, and four hours of composition every day starting at 4 am. Several months later, still in 1933, Cage became sufficiently good at composition to approach Schoenberg. He could not afford Schoenberg's price, and when he mentioned it,
2928-486: A large space who were all to commence and stop playing at two particular time periods, with instructions on when to play individually or in groups within these two periods. The result was a mass superimposition of many different musics on top of one another as determined by chance distribution, producing an event with a specifically theatric feel. Many Musicircuses have subsequently been held, and continue to occur even after Cage's death. The English National Opera (ENO) became
3111-612: A living partly by giving small, private lectures on contemporary art. He got to know various important figures of the Southern California art world, such as Richard Buhlig (who became his first composition teacher) and arts patron Galka Scheyer . By 1933, Cage decided to concentrate on music rather than painting. "The people who heard my music had better things to say about it than the people who looked at my paintings had to say about my paintings", Cage later explained. In 1933 he sent some of his compositions to Henry Cowell;
3294-417: A main rectangular structure flanked by two L-shaped wing corridors and a tail corridor, set at the edge of a large artificial pond. Inside, a single golden image of Amida ( c. 1053 ) is installed on a high platform. The Amida sculpture was executed by Jōchō , who used a new canon of proportions and a new technique ( yosegi ), in which multiple pieces of wood are carved out like shells and joined from
3477-456: A major change in Cage's music: he turned again to writing fully notated works for traditional instruments, and tried out several new approaches, such as improvisation , which he previously discouraged, but was able to use in works from the 1970s, such as Child of Tree (1975). Cheap Imitation became the last work Cage performed in public himself. Arthritis had troubled Cage since 1960, and by
3660-419: A major industry at various points. Japanese lacquerware is also one of the world's leading arts and crafts, and works gorgeously decorated with maki-e were exported to Europe and China, remaining important exports until the 19th century. In architecture , Japanese preferences for natural materials and an interaction of interior and exterior space are clearly expressed. The first settlers of Japan were
3843-461: A minimum of detail. Catching a Catfish with a Gourd (early 15th century, Taizō-in , Myōshin-ji , Kyoto), by the priest-painter Josetsu (active c. 1400 ), marks a turning point in Muromachi painting. Executed originally for a low-standing screen, it has been remounted as a hanging scroll with inscriptions by contemporary figures above, one of which refers to the painting as being in
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#17327837954114026-564: A modification of Yayoi culture, attributable either to internal development or external force. This period is most notable for its tomb culture and other artifacts such as bronze mirrors and clay sculptures called haniwa which were erected outside these tombs. Throughout the Kofun period, the characteristics of these tombs evolved from smaller tombs erected on hilltops and ridges to much larger tombs built on flat land. The largest tomb in Japan,
4209-676: A new, more realistic style of sculpture. The two Niō guardian images (1203) in the Great South Gate of the Tōdai-ji in Nara illustrate .Unkei's dynamic supra-realistic style. The images, about 8 m (about 26 ft) tall, were carved of multiple blocks in a period of about three months, a feat indicative of a developed studio system of artisans working under the direction of a master sculptor. Unkei's polychromed wood sculptures (1208, Kōfuku-ji , Nara) of two Indian sages, Muchaku and Seshin ,
4392-433: A part of these performances refused to participate, citing the impossibility of the requests Cage was making. Days before Europas 1 & 2 were to be premiered, Frankfurt's opera house burned down, setting into motion a series of setbacks leading to a theatrical run met with mixed reactions, including a performance so bad that Cage penned a letter to his musicians criticizing their interpretation of his composition. In
4575-444: A personal work, one in which the composer is present. When asked about this apparent contradiction, Cage replied: "Obviously, Cheap Imitation lies outside of what may seem necessary in my work in general, and that's disturbing. I'm the first to be disturbed by it." Cage's fondness for the piece resulted in a recording—a rare occurrence, since Cage disliked making recordings of his music—made in 1976. Overall, Cheap Imitation marked
4758-506: A placard that said "Question." Ushio Shinohara read out his questions, in both Japanese and English, to which Robert Rauschenberg did not respond. The Japanese artist, frustrated, placed the sheet of paper containing the question under the Rauschenberg's foot, which finally paid attention to the question and then pasted the sheet onto the panel of the gold screen. This tense interaction between Rauschenberg and Shinohara, in addition to
4941-526: A place where they could be spontaneous and experiment. The artists themselves are the real producers... I think it was probably the first time that any organization was able to sustain and continue this sort of thing." Like the Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition (1949-1964), the goal (self-described) was to offer artists a "safe haven from the storm of capitalism that controlled the art market." In connection to this horizontal approach,
5124-507: A popular and controversial topic both in musicology and the broader aesthetics of art and performance. Cage was also a pioneer of the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by objects placed between or on its strings or hammers), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces. These include Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48). Cage was born September 5, 1912, at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles. His father, John Milton Cage Sr. (1886–1964),
5307-472: A potted history of canonical classics, with 52 tapes of computer-generated sounds, 6,400 slides of designs, many supplied by NASA , and shown from sixty-four slide projectors, with 40 motion-picture films. The piece was initially rendered in a five-hour performance at the University of Illinois in 1969, in which the audience arrived after the piece had begun and left before it ended, wandering freely around
5490-409: A scroll that deals with an intrigue at court, emphasizes figures in active motion depicted in rapidly executed brush strokes and thin but vibrant colors. E-maki also serve as some of the earliest and greatest examples of the otoko-e ("men's pictures") and onna-e ("women's pictures") styles of painting. There are many fine differences in the two styles, appealing to the aesthetic preferences of
5673-511: A search for new forms of expression, at the crossroads of different artistic genres. The SAC was also an international platform, providing a venue in which the Japanese art world witnessed happenings and Fluxus events (notably in performances by Toshi Ichiyanagi and Yoko Ono ), or radical musical and artistic approaches (through the invitation of John Cage , David Tudor , Robert Rauschenberg ). The ambition to highlight international art
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5856-438: A second time into Japan and took root. Painting: Because of secular ventures and trading missions to China organized by Zen temples, many Chinese paintings and objects of art were imported into Japan and profoundly influenced Japanese artists working for Zen temples and the shogunate. Not only did these imports change the subject matter of painting, but they also modified the use of color; the bright colors of Yamato-e yielded to
6039-460: A set of instructions for Tudor as to how to complete the piece in the event of his death. Nevertheless, Cage managed to survive and maintained an active artistic life, giving lectures and performances, etc. In 1952–1953 he completed another mammoth project—the Williams Mix , a piece of tape music , which Earle Brown and Morton Feldman helped to put together. Also in 1952, Cage composed
6222-650: A shared interest in percussion and dance and would likely hit it off if introduced to one another. Indeed, the two immediately established a strong bond upon meeting and began a working relationship that continued for several years. Harrison soon helped Cage to secure a faculty member position at Mills College , teaching the same program as at UCLA, and collaborating with choreographer Marian van Tuyl . Several famous dance groups were present, and Cage's interest in modern dance grew further. After several months he left and moved to Seattle , Washington, where he found work as composer and accompanist for choreographer Bonnie Bird at
6405-1000: A single sentence: "In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action", and in the first performance the disciplined action was Cage writing that sentence. The score of Variations III (1962) abounds in instructions to the performers, but makes no references to music, musical instruments, or sounds. Many of the Variations and other 1960s pieces were in fact " happenings ", an art form established by Cage and his students in late 1950s. Cage's "Experimental Composition" classes at The New School have become legendary as an American source of Fluxus , an international network of artists, composers, and designers. The majority of his students had little or no background in music. Most were artists. They included Jackson Mac Low , Allan Kaprow , Al Hansen , George Brecht , Ben Patterson , and Dick Higgins , as well as many others Cage invited unofficially. Famous pieces that resulted from
6588-525: A song for voice and closed piano, in which two sets of proportions are used simultaneously. In late 1940s, Cage started developing further methods of breaking away with traditional harmony. For instance, in String Quartet in Four Parts (1950) Cage first composed a number of gamuts : chords with fixed instrumentation. The piece progresses from one gamut to another. In each instance the gamut
6771-478: A substantial body of works for performances by various choreographers, including Merce Cunningham, who had moved to New York City several years earlier. Cage and Cunningham eventually became romantically involved, and Cage's marriage, already breaking up during the early 1940s, ended in divorce in 1945. Cunningham remained Cage's partner for the rest of his life. Cage also countered the lack of percussion instruments by writing, on one occasion, for voice and closed piano:
6954-490: A technique that placed the rhythmic structure of the piece into the foreground. In Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939) there are four large sections of 16, 17, 18, and 19 bars, and each section is divided into four subsections, the first three of which were all 5 bars long. First Construction (in Metal) (1939) expands on the concept: there are five sections of 4, 3, 2, 3, and 4 units respectively. Each unit contains 16 bars, and
7137-480: A way of waking up to the very life we're living". Cage's best known work is the 1952 composition 4′33″ , a piece performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who perform the work do nothing but be present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is intended to be the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. The work's challenge to assumed definitions about musicianship and musical experience made it
7320-462: A wide variety of activities: musical performances, film screenings , journal publishing, educational space (study groups, workshops). The space was also made available to many artists, both local and international. For a modestly scaled institution, it instigated important changes in the local art scene by connecting Japanese artists and artists from abroad. Although, as outlined below, the SAC hosted diverse activities, its most consistent engagement over
7503-582: Is a famous example of this style. In 1180, a war broke out between the two most powerful warrior clans: the Taira and the Minamoto ; five years later the Minamoto emerged victorious and established a de facto seat of government at the seaside village of Kamakura , where it remained until 1333. With the shift of power from the nobility to the warrior class, the arts had to satisfy a new audience: men devoted to
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7686-623: Is a short lively piece that ends abruptly, while "Crete" is a slightly longer, mostly melodic contrapuntal work. Cage's first experiences with music were from private piano teachers in the Greater Los Angeles area and several relatives, particularly his aunt Phoebe Harvey James who introduced him to the piano music of the 19th century. He received first piano lessons when he was in the fourth grade at school, but although he liked music, he expressed more interest in sight reading than in developing virtuoso piano technique, and apparently
7869-484: Is divided the same way: 4 bars, 3 bars, 2 bars, etc. Finally, the musical content of the piece is based on sixteen motives. Such "nested proportions", as Cage called them, became a regular feature of his music throughout the 1940s. The technique was elevated to great complexity in later pieces such as Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (1946–48), in which many proportions used non-integer numbers (1¼, ¾, 1¼, ¾, 1½, and 1½ for Sonata I , for example), or A Flower ,
8052-465: Is not only the fire he has set aside for so long—the fire of passion—but also fire as transitoriness and fragility." On August 11, 1992, while preparing evening tea for himself and Cunningham, Cage had another stroke. He was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, where he died on the morning of August 12. He was 79. According to his wishes, Cage's body was cremated and his ashes scattered in
8235-492: Is one of Sesshu's most accomplished works, depicting a continuing landscape through the four seasons. In the Azuchi–Momoyama period (1573–1603), a succession of military leaders, such as Oda Nobunaga , Toyotomi Hideyoshi , and Tokugawa Ieyasu , attempted to bring peace and political stability to Japan after an era of almost 100 years of warfare. Oda, a minor chieftain, acquired power sufficient to take de facto control of
8418-599: Is the case of Group Ongaku , of which Yasunao Tone was a member, who played a concert at the SAC in 1961. The group used a variety of "instruments" including everyday objects (vacuum cleaner, dishes, washboard...), in a methodology of improvisation described as automatism . They gave their concert in front of a full house (with a capacity of 400 people) and their performance was covered by the major newspapers Mainichi and Asahi Shimbun . In November 1964, Merce Cunningham , John Cage , Steve Paxton , Deborah Hay and Robert Rauschenberg were also able to visit Japan thanks to
8601-605: The Cornish College of the Arts . The Cornish School years proved to be a particularly important period in Cage's life. Aside from teaching and working as accompanist, Cage organized a percussion ensemble that toured the West Coast and brought the composer his first fame. His reputation was enhanced further with the invention of the prepared piano—a piano which has had its sound altered by objects placed on, beneath or between
8784-769: The Fujiwara period , Pure Land Buddhism , which offered easy salvation through belief in Amida (the Buddha of the Western Paradise), became popular. This period is named after the Fujiwara family , then the most powerful in the country, who ruled as regents for the Emperor, becoming, in effect, civil dictators. Concurrently, the Kyoto nobility developed a society devoted to elegant aesthetic pursuits. So secure and beautiful
8967-665: The Fukukenjaku Kannon (不空羂索観音立像, the most popular bodhisattva), crafted of dry lacquer (cloth dipped in lacquer and shaped over a wooden armature); the Kaidanin (戒壇院, Ordination Hall) with its magnificent clay statues of the Four Guardian Kings ; and the storehouse, called the Shōsōin . This last structure is of great importance as an art-historical cache, because in it are stored the utensils that were used in
9150-408: The I Ching was far from simple randomization. The procedures varied from composition to composition, and were usually complex. For example, in the case of Cheap Imitation , the exact questions asked to the I Ching were these: In another example of late music by Cage, Etudes Australes , the compositional procedure involved placing a transparent strip on the star chart, identifying the pitches from
9333-466: The I Ching ; the book would then be used in much the same way as it is used for divination. For Cage, this meant "imitating nature in its manner of operation". His lifelong interest in sound itself culminated in an approach that yielded works in which sounds were free from the composer's will: When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic,
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#17327837954119516-559: The Jōmon people ( c. 10,500 – c. 300 BCE ), named for the cord markings that decorated the surfaces of their clay vessels, were nomadic hunter-gatherers who later practiced organized farming and built cities with populations of hundreds if not thousands. They built simple houses of wood and thatch set into shallow earthen pits to provide warmth from the soil. They crafted lavishly decorated pottery storage vessels , clay figurines called dogū , and crystal jewels. During
9699-452: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) , Guggenheim withdrew all support, and, even after the ultimately successful MoMA concert, Cage was left homeless, unemployed and penniless. The commissions he hoped for did not happen. He and Xenia spent the summer of 1942 with dancer Jean Erdman and her husband Joseph Campbell . Without the percussion instruments, Cage again turned to prepared piano, producing
9882-775: The Ramapo Mountains , near Stony Point , New York, at the same place where he had scattered the ashes of his parents. The composer's death occurred only weeks before a celebration of his 80th birthday organized in Frankfurt by composer Walter Zimmermann and musicologist Stefan Schaedler. The event went ahead as planned, including a performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra by David Tudor and Ensemble Modern . Merce Cunningham died of natural causes in July 2009. Cage's first completed pieces have been lost. According to
10065-464: The Tokugawa shogunate , organized religion played a much less important role in people's lives, and the arts that survived were primarily secular. The Meiji Period (1868–1912) saw an abrupt influx of Western styles, which have continued to be important. Painting is the preferred artistic expression in Japan, practiced by amateurs and professionals alike. Until modern times, the Japanese wrote with
10248-508: The University of Chicago . At one point, his reputation as percussion composer landed him a commission from the Columbia Broadcasting System to compose a soundtrack for a radio play by Kenneth Patchen . The result, The City Wears a Slouch Hat , was received well, and Cage deduced that more important commissions would follow. Hoping to find these, he left Chicago for New York City in the spring of 1942. In New York,
10431-597: The e-maki , the lives of the two Korean priests who founded the Kegon sect, is swiftly paced and filled with fantastic feats such as a journey to the palace of the Ocean King, and a poignant mom story. A work in a more conservative vein is the illustrated version of Murasaki Shikibu's diary . E-maki versions of her novel continued to be produced, but the nobility, attuned to the new interest in realism yet nostalgic for past days of wealth and power, revived and illustrated
10614-521: The monochromes of painting in the Chinese manner, where paintings generally only have black and white or different tones of a single color. Typical of early Muromachi painting is the depiction by the priest-painter Kao (active early 15th century) of the legendary monk Kensu (Hsien-tzu in Chinese) at the moment he achieved enlightenment. This type of painting was executed with quick brush strokes and
10797-412: The "new style". In the foreground a man is depicted on the bank of a stream holding a small gourd and looking at a large slithery catfish. Mist fills the middle ground, and the background mountains appear to be far in the distance. It is generally assumed that the "new style" of the painting, executed about 1413, refers to a more Chinese sense of deep space within the picture plane. The foremost artists of
10980-436: The 10th millennium BCE, to the present day. Japan has alternated between periods of exposure to new ideas, and long periods of minimal contact with the outside world. Over time the country absorbed, imitated, and finally assimilated elements of foreign culture that complemented already-existing aesthetic preferences. The earliest complex art in Japan was produced in the 7th and 8th centuries in connection with Buddhism . In
11163-594: The 1950s until his death in 1992. At the university, the philosopher, poet, and professor of classics Norman O. Brown befriended Cage, an association that proved fruitful to both. In 1960 the composer was appointed a fellow on the faculty of the Center for Advanced Studies (now the Center for Humanities) in the Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wesleyan, where he started teaching classes in experimental music. In October 1961, Wesleyan University Press published Silence ,
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#173278379541111346-560: The 1958 lecture Indeterminacy : After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, "In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony." I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, "In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall." Cage studied with Schoenberg for two years, but although he admired his teacher, he decided to leave after Schoenberg told
11529-463: The 7th and 8th centuries, however, the major focus in contacts between Japan and the Asian continent was the development of Buddhism. Not all scholars agree on the significant dates and the appropriate names to apply to various time periods between 552, the official date of the introduction of Buddhism into Japan, and 784, when the Japanese capital was transferred from Nara. The most common designations are
11712-458: The 9th century, as the Japanese began to turn away from China and develop indigenous forms of expression, the secular arts became increasingly important; until the late 15th century, both religious and secular arts flourished. After the Ōnin War (1467–1477), Japan entered a period of political, social, and economic turmoil that lasted for over a century. In the state that emerged under the leadership of
11895-475: The Americas Art of Oceania Japanese art consists of a wide range of art styles and media that includes ancient pottery , sculpture , ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, ukiyo-e paintings and woodblock prints , ceramics , origami , bonsai , and more recently manga and anime . It has a long history, ranging from the beginnings of human habitation in Japan, sometime in
12078-490: The Cage's performances is debatable, especially when similar experimentation had already been happening in Japan. These nuances are notably expressed by Yasunao Tone , who put forward the fact that these performances did not constitute a shock but were accepted rather easily. The music critic Hewell Tircuit wrote an article for The Japan Times highlighting the fact that several Japanese artists were already experimenting with processes similar to those that Cage had exhibited. This
12261-588: The Cages first stayed with painter Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim . Through them, Cage met important artists such as Piet Mondrian , André Breton , Jackson Pollock , and Marcel Duchamp , and many others. Guggenheim was very supportive: the Cages could stay with her and Ernst for any length of time, and she offered to organize a concert of Cage's music at the opening of her gallery, which included paying for transportation of Cage's percussion instruments from Chicago. After she learned that Cage secured another concert, at
12444-455: The Cinema 57 group, which screened independent films. Sōgetsu Cinemathèque was launched in 1961 and was the SAC's longest running series. It showcased both new and experimental films as well as revisiting key films from history, such as silent films . From around 1961-1965, the SAC greatly expanded its programming beyond the three earlier series and welcomed various different creators. Notably,
12627-484: The Court and the laity in the capital. The irregular topography of these sites forced Japanese architects to rethink the problems of temple construction, and in so doing to choose more indigenous elements of design. Cypress-bark roofs replaced those of ceramic tile, wood planks were used instead of earthen floors, and a separate worship area for the laity was added in front of the main sanctuary. The temple that best reflects
12810-735: The Early Jōmon Period in many ways. These people were less nomadic and began to settle in villages. They created useful tools that to process the food they gathered and hunted, which made life easier. Through the numerous aesthetically pleasing ceramics found during this period, it is evident that they had a stable economy and more leisure time. In addition, the people of the Middle Jōmon period differed from their ancestors in their development of vessels for specific functions, for example, pots for storage. The decorations on these vessels were more realistic than those on early Jōmon ceramics. During
12993-503: The Early Jōmon period (5000–2500 BCE), villages started to be discovered and ordinary everyday objects were found such as ceramic pots for boiling water. The pots found during this time had flat bottoms and elaborate designs made out of materials such as bamboo. It is believed that some early Jōmon figurines may have been used as fertility objects based on their breasts and broad hips. The Middle Jōmon period (2500–1500 BCE), differed from
13176-674: The Late and Final Jōmon period (1500–300 BCE), the weather grew colder, prompting settlers to move away from the mountains. The main food source was fish, which led them to develop fishing tools and techniques. In addition, the increase in the number of vessels suggests that each household had its own stock. Some vessels found during the Late and Final Jōmon Period were damaged which might indicate that they were used for rituals. In addition, figurines were found with distinctive fleshy bodies and goggle-like eyes. Dogū figurines Dogū ("earthen figure") are small humanoid and animal figurines dated to
13359-478: The Muromachi period are the priest-painters Shūbun and Sesshū . Shūbun, a monk at the Kyoto temple of Shōkoku-ji , created in the painting Reading in a Bamboo Grove (1446) a realistic landscape with deep recession into space. Sesshū, unlike most artists of the period, was able to journey to China and study Chinese painting at its source. Landscape of the Four Seasons ( Sansui Chokan ; c. 1486 )
13542-407: The SAC - for example, the performance tied to the exhibition From Space to Environment in 1966 involved an intermedia apparatus built from sound and light systems. The SAC is often regarded as the birthplace of the happening in Japan. At Yoko Ono's recital in 1962, she debuted several pieces which were some of the first and most noteworthy artistic happenings in Japan. In each work, she instructed
13725-442: The SAC consistently attempted to blur the boundaries between different genres of art. The artist Kuniharu Akiyama explained that the SAC was "a forum for the interchange of each genre of art, it was a departure point for us to think about new integrated artworks and the integration of different arts." This impulse is visible even in the earlier programs of the SAC – despite being demarcated into jazz, experimental music, and film, it
13908-519: The SAC's international ambitions and outlook: following the success of 1956's Sekai konnichi no bijutsu ("Art of Today's World ") exhibition held at Takashimaya Department Store and curated by critics Shin'ichi Segi and Michel Tapié , which set in motion what is known as the Anforumeru senpū (" Informel whirlwind'), Michel Tapié and Georges Mathieu came to Japan, at the invitation of Jirō Yoshihara and Sōfū Teshigahara . The SAC space hosted
14091-536: The SAC. There was some effort made by the SAC to start its own experimental theatre series, but the Sōgetsu Experimental Theatre only hosted one performance, by Group NLT (today Gekidan NLT ), in 1964. After 1965, the SAC programming shifted to mostly focus on film , with less activity in the performing arts, although there were still some notable performances of works by Shūji Terayama and others. The SAC launched several new film festivals, including
14274-424: The SAC. In the former piece, he cooked, read a book, and moved around onstage as he would do in his everyday life, but with the sound of his actions amplified and delivered to the audience through a number of speakers. In 0'00 , Cage amplified the subtle noise of writing out a score while smoking from time to time. After forty minutes of this action, he descended into the auditorium to receive a kiss from Yoko Ono (who
14457-687: The Sekai Zen’ei Eiga-sai ("World Avant-garde Film Festival"), the Underground Film Festival, the Sōgetsu Experimental Film Festival, and the Film Art Festival. Although these new film festivals underscored the SAC's support for avant-garde artists, the 1969 Film Art Festival was forced to shut down when several violent factions of the underground film scene occupied the auditorium and called for
14640-698: The Six Insides by Jean Erdman , and the first showcase in Japan by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company . There were noteworthy performances by Japanese creators as well, including dance recitals by Akiko Motofuji , Butoh works by Tatsumi Hijikata , works by Jūrō Kara ’s Jōkyō Gekijō (Situation Theatre), plays by Tetsuji Takechi , and plays by Shūji Terayama . Members of the Hanayagi school of nihon buyō (traditional Japanese dance), including Suzushi Hanayagi , also performed at
14823-673: The Suiko period, 552–645; the Hakuhō period , 645–710, and the Tenpyō period, 710–784. The earliest Japanese sculptures of the Buddha are dated to the 6th and 7th century. They ultimately derive from the 1st- to 3rd-century AD Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara , characterized by flowing dress patterns and realistic rendering, on which Chinese artistic traits were superimposed. After the Chinese Northern Wei buddhist art had infiltrated
15006-751: The Sōgetsu Art Center, as part of a world tour of the Merce Cunningham Dance Compagny , which ended in Tokyo . Robert Rauschenberg participated in a US-Japan dance exchange workshop, arranged by Kuniharu Akiyama , that took place at the SAC on November 20, 1964. American participants were Robert Rauschenberg , Steve Paxton , Deborah Hay and Barbara Lloyd, while Japanese participants included dancers and performers such as Tatsumi Hijikata , Takehisa Kosugi and Mariko Sanjo . On November 28, 1964, Robert Rauschenberg participated in
15189-567: The Tōdaiji represented the center for Imperially sponsored Buddhism and its dissemination throughout Japan. Only a few fragments of the original statue survive, and the present hall and central Buddha are reconstructions from the Edo period . Clustered around the Daibutsuden on a gently sloping hillside are a number of secondary halls: the Hokke-dō (Lotus Sutra Hall), with its principal image,
15372-471: The University of California, Los Angeles. He produced music for choreographies and at one point taught a course on "Musical Accompaniments for Rhythmic Expression" at UCLA, with his aunt Phoebe. It was during that time that Cage first started experimenting with unorthodox instruments, such as household items, metal sheets, and so on. This was inspired by Oskar Fischinger , who told Cage that "everything in
15555-508: The Western world's 19th-century dialogue with Japanese art . The Japanese, in this period, found sculpture a much less sympathetic medium for artistic expression: most large Japanese sculpture is associated with religion , and the medium's use declined with the lessening importance of traditional Buddhism. Japanese pottery is among the finest in the world and includes the earliest known Japanese artifacts; Japanese export porcelain has been
15738-420: The accidentals, clefs, and playing techniques. A whole series of works was created by applying chance operations, i.e. the I Ching , to star charts : Atlas Eclipticalis (1961–62), and a series of etudes: Etudes Australes (1974–75), Freeman Etudes (1977–90), and Etudes Boreales (1978). Cage's etudes are all extremely difficult to perform, a characteristic dictated by Cage's social and political views:
15921-524: The assembled students that he was trying to make it impossible for them to write music. Much later, Cage recounted the incident: "... When he said that, I revolted, not against him, but against what he had said. I determined then and there, more than ever before, to write music." Although Schoenberg was not impressed with Cage's compositional abilities during these two years, in a later interview, where he initially said that none of his American pupils were interesting, he further stated in reference to Cage: "There
16104-416: The audience. If the performers grew tired, they could sit down or even lie down on stage. The event ended once there was no one left in the audience. An unidentified reviewer of Ono's performance defined the happening as "not an art that has already been completed, but an art form that enables the audience to receive something by witnessing the unfolding of nonsense acts, experiencing the process together with
16287-410: The auditorium in the time for which they were there. Also in 1969, Cage produced the first fully notated work in years: Cheap Imitation for piano. The piece is a chance-controlled reworking of Erik Satie 's Socrate , and, as both listeners and Cage himself noted, openly sympathetic to its source. Although Cage's affection for Satie's music was well-known, it was highly unusual for him to compose
16470-521: The auditorium/lecture hall in the newly constructed Sōgetsu Hall (headquarters of the Sōgetsu School of ikebana) in Tokyo's Akasaka district. Sōfū Teshigahara was extremely supportive of the SAC and its activities from the beginning. He invited Georges Mathieu and Sam Francis to create mural paintings for the auditorium of Sōgetsu Hall. The history of this artistic commission was emblematic of
16653-494: The center hosted screenings of a new animation group known as Animeshon Sannin no Kai ("Association of Three Animators"), as well as three Animation Festivals which invited other animators inside and outside Japan to submit works for screening. The SAC also experimented with hosting a variety of dance and theatrical performances. Major performances by international visitors included the Off-Broadway play The Coach with
16836-429: The center sponsored performances by prominent artists and musicians from outside Japan, including John Cage , David Tudor , Robert Rauschenberg , and Nam June Paik , as well as solo performances from Japanese artists and composers such as Yoko Ono , Toshi Ichiyanagi , and Tōru Takemitsu . These performances, all by creators with some connection to Fluxus , introduced these new ideas to a Japanese audience. Because of
17019-462: The chart, transferring them to paper, then asking the I Ching which of these pitches were to remain single, and which should become parts of aggregates (chords), and the aggregates were selected from a table of some 550 possible aggregates, compiled beforehand. Finally, some of Cage's works, particularly those completed during the 1960s, feature instructions to the performer, rather than fully notated music. The score of Variations I (1958) presents
17202-426: The classes include George Brecht's Time Table Music and Al Hansen's Alice Denham in 48 Seconds . As set forth by Cage, happenings were theatrical events that abandon the traditional concept of stage-audience and occur without a sense of definite duration. Instead, they are left to chance. They have a minimal script, with no plot. In fact, a "happening" is so-named because it occurs in the present, attempting to arrest
17385-481: The company. This performance is considered as a legendary incident in the history of postwar Japanese art, an exemplary case of cross-cultural interaction. When Yoshiaki Tōno invited Nobuaki Kojima and Ushio Shinohara to come to the stage to ask their questions to Robert Rauschenberg , the two artists brought onto stage their own works - Shinohara's Marcel Duchamp Thinking (Shiko suru Maruseru Dyushan , 1963) and Coca-Cola Plan (1964), Kojiya's Figure (1964) holding
17568-425: The composer's part–requiring two full-time assistants and two computers humming day and night." These pieces caused quite a stir in the world of opera at the time with their unconventional methods for staging and sequencing. Many standard pieces of operatic repertoire were used, but not in any preset order; rather, they were selected by chance, meaning no two performances were exactly alike. Many of those who were to be
17751-501: The composer, the earliest works were very short pieces for piano, composed using complex mathematical procedures and lacking in "sensual appeal and expressive power." Cage then started producing pieces by improvising and writing down the results, until Richard Buhlig stressed to him the importance of structure. Most works from the early 1930s, such as Sonata for Clarinet (1933) and Composition for 3 Voices (1934), are highly chromatic and betray Cage's interest in counterpoint . Around
17934-514: The concept of passing time. Cage believed that theater was the closest route to integrating art and real life. The term "happenings" was coined by Allan Kaprow, one of his students, who defined it as a genre in the late fifties. Cage met Kaprow while on a mushroom hunt with George Segal and invited him to join his class. In following these developments Cage was strongly influenced by Antonin Artaud 's seminal treatise The Theatre and Its Double , and
18117-455: The corner posts and their branches extending to left and right, unifying the adjoining panels. Eitoku's screen, Chinese Lions , also in Kyoto, reveals the bold, brightly colored style of painting preferred by the samurai. Hasegawa Tōhaku , a contemporary of Eitoku, developed a somewhat different and more decorative style for large-scale screen paintings. In his Maple Screen (楓図), now in the temple of Chishaku-in ( ja:智積院 ), Kyoto, he placed
18300-437: The course of its history tended to be with experimental music and film. Throughout its active years, SAC also enjoyed longstanding collaborations with many prominent graphic designers, including Kōhei Sugiura , Makoto Wada , Tadanori Yokoo , Akio Kanda, Ikkō Tanaka and Kiyoshi Awazu , who designed posters and promotional materials for the center's activities. In the early years, programs were divided into three categories:
18483-498: The course of the 1980s, Cage's health worsened progressively. He suffered not only from arthritis, but also from sciatica and arteriosclerosis . He had a stroke that left the movement of his left leg restricted, and, in 1985, broke an arm. During this time, Cage pursued a macrobiotic diet . Nevertheless, ever since arthritis started plaguing him, the composer was aware of his age, and, as biographer David Revill observed, "the fire which he began to incorporate in his visual work in 1985
18666-502: The creation of monumental landscapes on the sliding doors enclosing a room. The decoration of the main room facing the garden of the Jukō-in , a subtemple of Daitoku-ji (a Zen temple in Kyoto), is perhaps the best extant example of Eitoku's work. A massive ume tree and twin pines are depicted on pairs of sliding screens in diagonally opposite corners, their trunks repeating the verticals of
18849-585: The diary in order to recapture the splendor of the author's times. One of the most beautiful passages illustrates the episode in which Murasaki Shikibu is playfully held prisoner in her room by two young courtiers, while, just outside, moonlight gleams on the mossy banks of a rivulet in the imperial garden. During the Muromachi period (1338–1573), also called the Ashikaga period, a profound change took place in Japanese culture. The Ashikaga clan took control of
19032-565: The difficulty would ensure that "a performance would show that the impossible is not impossible" —this being Cage's answer to the notion that solving the world's political and social problems is impossible. Cage described himself as an anarchist, and was influenced by Henry David Thoreau . Another series of works applied chance procedures to pre-existing music by other composers: Cheap Imitation (1969; based on Erik Satie), Some of "The Harmony of Maine" (1978; based on Belcher ), and Hymns and Variations (1979). In these works, Cage would borrow
19215-483: The early 1970s his hands were painfully swollen and rendered him unable to perform. Nevertheless, he still played Cheap Imitation during the 1970s, before finally having to give up performing. Preparing manuscripts also became difficult: before, published versions of pieces were done in Cage's calligraphic script; now, manuscripts for publication had to be completed by assistants. Matters were complicated further by David Tudor's departure from performing, which happened in
19398-471: The early 1970s. Tudor decided to concentrate on composition instead, and so Cage, for the first time in two decades, had to start relying on commissions from other performers, and their respective abilities. Such performers included Grete Sultan , Paul Zukofsky , Margaret Leng Tan , and many others. Aside from music, Cage continued writing books of prose and poetry ( mesostics ). M was first published by Wesleyan University Press in 1973. In January 1978 Cage
19581-457: The end of the Jōmon period . They were produced all over Japan, except Okinawa . According to some scholars, the dogū were effigies of people and might have been used in sympathetic magic . Dogū are small clay figures, typically 10 to 30 centimetres (4 to 12 inches) high. Most are female, with large eyes, small waists and wide hips. Many have large bellies, suggesting that they were mother goddesses . The next wave of immigrants
19764-427: The era yet also his absorption of the writings of both Marshall McLuhan , on the effects of new media, and R. Buckminster Fuller , on the power of technology to promote social change. HPSCHD (1969), a gargantuan and long-running multimedia work made in collaboration with Lejaren Hiller , incorporated the mass superimposition of seven harpsichords playing chance-determined excerpts from the works of Cage, Hiller, and
19947-551: The event "Twenty Questions to Bob Rauschenberg". The event was originally planned by the art critic Yoshiaki Tōno as a discussion between Rauschenberg and members of the Tokyo art community, including himself, Nobuaki Kojima and Ushio Shinohara . However, instead of answering the questions of his Japanese interviewers, however, Rauschenberg spent the lecture time silently creating a Combine, entitled Gold Standard. He, with Alex Hay as his main assistant and help from Deborah Hay and Steve Paxton , painted and placed objects (barrier from
20130-487: The festival's destruction. Although some of the SAC affiliates were able to de-escalate the mob, whose actual goals were unclear, the festival nevertheless closed. In the last few years of the SAC, most events were screenings part of the Sōgetsu Cinemathèque. In April 1971 the center closed, ending a significant period in avant-garde art in Tokyo. Although he was the director of SAC, Hiroshi Teshigahara advocated
20313-555: The first " happening " (see discussion below) in the United States, later titled Theatre Piece No. 1 , a multi-layered, multi-media performance event staged the same day as Cage conceived it that "that would greatly influence 1950s and 60s artistic practices". In addition to Cage, the participants included Cunningham and Tudor. From 1953 onward, Cage was busy composing music for modern dance, particularly Cunningham's dances (Cage's partner adopted chance too, out of fascination for
20496-714: The first two were focused on music: the Sōgetsu Contemporary Series (avant-garde classical music) and the Sōgetsu Music Inn (jazz); and the third, the Sōgetsu Cinemathèque primarily screened films. The program of the Sōgetsu Contemporary Series, for the first few years, was conducted by members of the Sakkyokuka Shūdan (Composer's Group), including composer Tōru Takemitsu and Toshirō Mayuzumi . The SAC's film activities can be traced back to 1957, when Hiroshi Teshigahara and fellow director Susumu Hani founded
20679-669: The founding of the Kegon sect, is an excellent example of the popularizing trend in Kamakura painting. The Kegon sect, one of the most important in the Nara period, fell on hard times during the ascendancy of the Pure Land sects. After the Genpei War (1180–1185), Priest Myōe of Kōzan-ji sought to revive the sect and also to provide a refuge for women widowed by the war. The wives of samurai had been discouraged from learning more than
20862-604: The genders. But perhaps most easily noticeable are the differences in subject matter. Onna-e , epitomized by the Tale of Genji handscroll, typically deals with court life, particularly the court ladies, and with romantic themes. Otoko-e often recorded historical events, particularly battles. The Siege of the Sanjō Palace (1160), depicted in the "Night Attack on the Sanjō Palace" section of the Heiji Monogatari handscroll
21045-538: The government in 1568 and, five years later, to oust the last Ashikaga shōgun. Hideyoshi took command after Oda's death, but his plans to establish hereditary rule were foiled by Ieyasu, who established the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603. Painting: The most important school of painting in the Momoyama period was that of the Kanō school , and the greatest innovation of the period was the formula, developed by Kanō Eitoku , for
21228-435: The happenings of this period can be viewed as a forerunner to the ensuing Fluxus movement. In October 1960, Mary Bauermeister 's Cologne studio hosted a joint concert by Cage and the video artist Nam June Paik (Cage's friend and mentee), who in the course of his performance of Etude for Piano cut off Cage's tie and then poured a bottle of shampoo over the heads of Cage and Tudor. In 1967, Cage's book A Year from Monday
21411-508: The idea of music as means of communication: the public rarely accepted his work, and Cage himself, too, had trouble understanding the music of his colleagues. In early 1946 Cage agreed to tutor Gita Sarabhai , an Indian musician who came to the US to study Western music. In return, he asked her to teach him about Indian music and philosophy. Cage also attended, in late 1940s and early 1950s, D. T. Suzuki 's lectures on Zen Buddhism , and read further
21594-487: The initial impetus for contacts between China and Japan. The Japanese recognized the facets of Chinese culture that could profitably be incorporated into their own: a system for converting ideas and sounds into writing; historiography ; complex theories of government, such as an effective bureaucracy ; and, most important for the arts, new technologies, new building techniques, more advanced methods of casting in bronze , and new techniques and media for painting. Throughout
21777-702: The inside. Applied to the walls of the hall are small relief carvings of celestials, the host believed to have accompanied Amida when he descended from the Western Paradise to gather the souls of believers at the moment of death and transport them in lotus blossoms to Paradise. Raigō paintings on the wooden doors of the Hō-ō-dō, depicting the Descent of the Amida Buddha, are an early example of Yamato-e , Japanese-style painting, and contain representations of
21960-477: The institution was not being run correctly. I left. Cage persuaded his parents that a trip to Europe would be more beneficial to a future writer than college studies. He subsequently hitchhiked to Galveston and sailed to Le Havre , where he took a train to Paris. Cage stayed in Europe for some 18 months, trying his hand at various forms of art. First, he studied Gothic and Greek architecture , but decided he
22143-499: The international notoriety of Fluxus , these performances continue to be some of the best-known events that occurred at the SAC. Group Ongaku, a young Japanese ensemble that composed and played musique concrète , also performed at the SAC several times around this period, and via the SAC was able to connect with Ichiyanagi and establish contact with the international Fluxus network (see more on Group Ongaku below). The SAC also expanded its film programming during this time. For example,
22326-615: The introduction and formation of a Buddhist tradition in Japan in 538 or 552. They illustrate the terminal point of the Silk Road transmission of art during the first few centuries of our era. Other examples can be found in the development of the iconography of the Japanese Fūjin Wind God, the Niō guardians, and the near- Classical floral patterns in temple decorations. The earliest Buddhist structures still extant in Japan, and
22509-477: The late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric or chance -controlled music, which he started composing in 1951. The I Ching , an ancient Chinese classic text and decision-making tool, became Cage's standard composition tool for the rest of his life. In a 1957 lecture, "Experimental Music", he described music as "a purposeless play" which is "an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply
22692-566: The legendary founders of the Hossō sect , are among the most accomplished realistic works of the period; as rendered by Unkei, they are remarkably individualized and believable images. One of the most famous works of this period is an Amitabha Triad (completed in 1195), in Jōdo-ji in Ono , created by Kaikei , Unkei's successor. Calligraphy and painting: The Kegon Engi Emaki , the illustrated history of
22875-482: The mid-1960s, Cage was receiving so many commissions and requests for appearances that he was unable to fulfill them. This was accompanied by a busy touring schedule; consequently Cage's compositional output from that decade was scant. After the orchestral Atlas Eclipticalis (1961–62), a work based on star charts , which was fully notated, Cage gradually shifted to, in his own words, "music (not composition)." The score of 0′00″ , completed in 1962, originally comprised
23058-625: The movement of the human body), as well as developing new methods of using chance, in a series of works he referred to as The Ten Thousand Things . In the summer of 1954 he moved out of New York and settled in Gate Hill Cooperative , a community in Stony Point, New York , where his neighbors included David Tudor, M. C. Richards , Karen Karnes , Stan VanDerBeek , and Sari Dienes . The composer's financial situation gradually improved: in late 1954 he and Tudor were able to embark on
23241-519: The new approach were Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 radio receivers, and Music of Changes for piano. The latter work was written for David Tudor, whom Cage met through Feldman—another friendship that lasted until Cage's death. Tudor premiered most of Cage's works until the early 1960s, when he stopped performing on the piano and concentrated on composing music. The I Ching became Cage's standard tool for composition: he used it in practically every work composed after 1951, and eventually settled on
23424-475: The number of performers needed; the music consisted of short notated fragments to be played at any tempo within the indicated time constraints. Cage went on to write some forty such Number Pieces , as they came to be known, one of the last being Eighty (1992, premiered in Munich on October 28, 2011), usually employing a variant of the same technique. The process of composition, in many of the later Number Pieces,
23607-535: The older composer asked whether Cage would devote his life to music. After Cage replied that he would, Schoenberg offered to tutor him free of charge. Cage studied with Schoenberg in California: first at University of Southern California and then at University of California, Los Angeles , as well as privately. The older composer became one of the biggest influences on Cage, who "literally worshipped him", particularly as an example of how to live one's life being
23790-530: The oldest wooden buildings in the Far East are found at the Hōryū-ji to the southwest of Nara. First built in the early 7th century as the private temple of Crown Prince Shōtoku , it consists of 41 independent buildings. The most important ones, the main worship hall, or Kondō (Golden Hall), and Gojū-no-tō (Five-story Pagoda ), stand in the center of an open area surrounded by a roofed cloister. The Kondō , in
23973-526: The opportunity to hear what other people think," anticipating 4′33″ by more than thirty years. Cage enrolled at Pomona College in Claremont as a theology major in 1928. Often crossing disciplines again, though, he encountered at Pomona the work of artist Marcel Duchamp via Professor José Pijoan, of writer James Joyce via Don Sample, of philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy and of Henry Cowell . In 1930 he dropped out, having come to believe that "college
24156-597: The orchestra performed Anton Webern's Symphony , followed by a piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff . Cage felt so overwhelmed by Webern's piece that he left before the Rachmaninoff; and in the lobby, he met Feldman, who was leaving for the same reason. The two composers quickly became friends; some time later Cage, Feldman, Earle Brown , David Tudor and Cage's pupil Christian Wolff came to be referred to as "the New York school". In early 1951, Wolff presented Cage with
24339-488: The performer with similar difficulties. Still other works from the same period consist just of text instructions. The score of 0′00″ (1962; also known as 4′33″ No. 2 ) consists of a single sentence: "In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action." The first performance had Cage write that sentence. Musicircus (1967) simply invites the performers to assemble and play together. The first Musicircus featured multiple performers and groups in
24522-436: The performer with six transparent squares, one with points of various sizes, five with five intersecting lines. The performer combines the squares and uses lines and points as a coordinate system , in which the lines are axes of various characteristics of the sounds, such as lowest frequency, simplest overtone structure, etc. Some of Cage's graphic scores (e.g. Concert for Piano and Orchestra , Fontana Mix (both 1958)) present
24705-499: The performers." However, artists such as Genpei Akasegawa have noted that even before Yoko Ono's recital, for several years the activities of the Neo-Dada Organizers had already resonated with the "happening." He recalled: "I obviously had the same awareness, even as part of Neo-Dada, you could say it was the instinct of the times, we just wanted to create actions. For me, it was about ceremonial events. We didn't have
24888-434: The piece that became his best-known and most controversial creation: 4′33″ . The score instructs the performer not to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece—four minutes, thirty-three seconds—and is meant to be perceived as consisting of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed. Cage conceived "a silent piece" years earlier, but was reluctant to write it down; and indeed,
25071-510: The premiere (given by Tudor on August 29, 1952, at Woodstock, New York ) caused an uproar in the audience. The reaction to 4′33″ was just a part of the larger picture: on the whole, it was the adoption of chance procedures that had disastrous consequences for Cage's reputation. The press, which used to react favorably to earlier percussion and prepared piano music, ignored his new works, and many valuable friendships and connections were lost. Pierre Boulez, who used to promote Cage's work in Europe,
25254-492: The presence on stage of works explicitly evoking the works of the star artist, recently awarded at the 1964 Venice Biennale ( Coca-Cola Plan ) and broadly in the United States ( Figure ), is indicative of the imbalance of cultural and financial power between American and Japanese artists at the time. Japanese art Art of Central Asia Art of East Asia Art of South Asia Art of Southeast Asia Art of Europe Art of Africa Art of
25437-506: The president of the corporation, offered Cage an exclusive contract and instigated the publication of a catalog of Cage's works, which appeared in 1962. Edition Peters soon published a large number of scores by Cage, and this, together with the publication of Silence , led to much higher prominence for the composer than ever before—one of the positive consequences of this was that in 1965 Betty Freeman set up an annual grant for living expenses for Cage, to be issued from 1965 to his death. By
25620-601: The recently deceased Prince Shōtoku. At the four corners of the platform are the Guardian Kings of the Four Directions , carved in wood around 650. Also housed at Hōryū-ji is the Tamamushi Shrine, a wooden replica of a Kondō , which is set on a high wooden base that is decorated with figural paintings executed in a medium of mineral pigments mixed with lacquer. Temple building in the 8th century
25803-620: The reply was a "rather vague letter", in which Cowell suggested that Cage study with Arnold Schoenberg —Cage's musical ideas at the time included composition based on a 25- tone row , somewhat similar to Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique . Cowell also advised that, before approaching Schoenberg, Cage should take some preliminary lessons, and recommended Adolph Weiss , a former Schoenberg pupil. Following Cowell's advice, Cage travelled to New York City in 1933 and started studying with Weiss as well as taking lessons from Cowell himself at The New School . He supported himself financially by taking up
25986-468: The resulting piece, The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (1942), quickly became popular and was performed by the celebrated duo of Cathy Berberian and Luciano Berio . In 1944, he appeared in Maya Deren 's At Land , a 15-minute silent experimental film. Like his personal life, Cage's artistic life went through a crisis in mid-1940s. The composer was experiencing a growing disillusionment with
26169-502: The rhythmic structure of the originals and fill it with pitches determined through chance procedures, or just replace some of the originals' pitches. Yet another series of works, the so-called Number Pieces , all completed during the last five years of the composer's life, make use of time brackets : the score consists of short fragments with indications of when to start and to end them (e.g. from anywhere between 1′15" and 1′45", and to anywhere from 2′00" to 2′30"). Cage's method of using
26352-667: The same time, the composer also developed a type of a tone row technique with 25-note rows. After studies with Schoenberg, who never taught dodecaphony to his students, Cage developed another tone row technique, in which the row was split into short motives, which would then be repeated and transposed according to a set of rules. This approach was first used in Two Pieces for Piano ( c. 1935 ), and then, with modifications, in larger works such as Metamorphosis and Five Songs (both 1938). Soon after Cage started writing percussion music and music for modern dance, he started using
26535-533: The scenery around Kyoto. E-maki : In the last century of the Heian period, the horizontal, illustrated narrative handscroll, known as e-maki (絵巻, lit. "picture scroll"), came to the fore. Dating from about 1130, the Genji Monogatari Emaki , a famous illustrated Tale of Genji represents the earliest surviving yamato-e handscroll, and one of the high points of Japanese painting. Written about
26718-500: The shogunate and moved its headquarters back to Kyoto, to the Muromachi district of the city. With the return of government to the capital, the popularizing trends of the Kamakura period came to an end, and cultural expression took on a more aristocratic, elitist character. Zen Buddhism, the Ch'an sect traditionally thought to have been founded in China in the 6th century, was introduced for
26901-553: The skills of warfare, priests committed to making Buddhism available to illiterate commoners, and conservatives, the nobility and some members of the priesthood who regretted the declining power of the court. Thus, realism, a popularizing trend, and a classical revival characterize the art of the Kamakura period . In the Kamakura period, Kyoto and Nara remained the centres of artistic production and high culture. Sculpture: The Kei school of sculptors, particularly Unkei , created
27084-461: The sound of traffic—here on Sixth Avenue, for instance—I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound ... I don't need sound to talk to me. Although Cage had used chance on a few earlier occasions, most notably in the third movement of Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1950–51), the I Ching opened new possibilities in this field for him. The first results of
27267-548: The spirit of early Heian Shingon temples is the Murō-ji (early 9th century), set deep in a stand of cypress trees on a mountain southeast of Nara. The wooden image (also early 9th century) of Shakyamuni , the "historic" Buddha, enshrined in a secondary building at the Murō-ji , is typical of the early Heian sculpture, with its ponderous body, covered by thick drapery folds carved in the honpa-shiki (rolling-wave) style, and its austere, withdrawn facial expression. Fujiwara art: In
27450-465: The strings—in 1940. This concept was originally intended for a performance staged in a room too small to include a full percussion ensemble. It was also at the Cornish School that Cage met several people who became lifelong friends, such as painter Mark Tobey and dancer Merce Cunningham . The latter was to become Cage's lifelong romantic partner and artistic collaborator. Cage left Seattle in
27633-519: The style of Chinese worship halls, is a two-story structure of post-and-beam construction, capped by an irimoya , or hipped-gabled roof of ceramic tiles. Inside the Kondō , on a large rectangular platform, are some of the most important sculptures of the period. The central image is a Shaka Trinity (623), the historical Buddha flanked by two bodhisattvas , sculpture cast in bronze by the sculptor Tori Busshi (flourished early 7th century) in homage to
27816-685: The summer of 1941 after the painter László Moholy-Nagy invited him to teach at the Chicago School of Design (what later became the IIT Institute of Design ). The composer accepted partly because he hoped to find opportunities in Chicago, that were not available in Seattle, to organize a center for experimental music. These opportunities did not materialize. Cage taught at the Chicago School of Design and worked as accompanist and composer at
27999-562: The temple's dedication ceremony in 752, the eye-opening ritual for the Rushana image, as well as government documents and many secular objects owned by the Imperial family. Choukin (or chōkin ), the art of metal engraving or sculpting, is thought to have started in the Nara period. In 794 the capital of Japan was officially transferred to Heian-kyō (present-day Kyoto ), where it remained until 1868. The term Heian period refers to
28182-551: The tomb of Emperor Nintoku , houses 46 burial mounds and is shaped like a keyhole, a distinct characteristic found within later Kofun tombs. During the Asuka and Nara periods , so named because the seat of Japanese government was located in the Asuka Valley from 542 to 645 and in the city of Nara until 784, the first significant influx of continental Asian culture took place in Japan. The transmission of Buddhism provided
28365-560: The trunk of the tree in the center and extended the limbs nearly to the edge of the composition, creating a flatter, less architectonic work than Eitoku, but a visually gorgeous painting. His sixfold screen, Pine Wood (松林図), is a masterly rendering in monochrome ink of a grove of trees enveloped in mist. John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist . A pioneer of indeterminacy in music , electroacoustic music , and non-standard use of musical instruments , Cage
28548-673: The word for 'happening' yet, so we were calling it something like a ceremony [ gishiki]." As much as the SAC introduced new concepts to the Japanese avant-garde , the center was equally a meeting point for like-minded ideas that had been developing both in Japan and elsewhere. John Cage and David Tudor were invited to Japan and stayed for six weeks at the end of 1962. Toshiro Mayuzumi , Toshi Ichiyanagi and Yoko Ono , who had collaborated with John Cage while living in New York, were instrumental in bringing Cage to Japan. On his 1962 visit, Cage performed Theater piece and also premiered 0'00, dedicated to Toshi Ichiyanagi and Yoko Ono , at
28731-695: The works of Coomaraswamy . The first fruits of these studies were works inspired by Indian concepts: Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano, String Quartet in Four Parts , and others. Cage accepted the goal of music as explained to him by Sarabhai: "to sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences". Early in 1946, his former teacher Richard Buhlig arranged for Cage to meet Berlin-born pianist Grete Sultan , who had escaped from Nazi persecution to New York in 1941. They became close, lifelong friends, and Cage later dedicated part of his Music for Piano and his monumental piano cycle Etudes Australes to her. In 1949, he received
28914-414: The world has a spirit that can be released through its sound." Although Cage did not share the idea of spirits, these words inspired him to begin exploring the sounds produced by hitting various non-musical objects. In 1938, on Cowell's recommendation, Cage drove to San Francisco to find employment and to seek out fellow Cowell student and composer Lou Harrison . According to Cowell, the two composers had
29097-549: The year 1000 by Murasaki Shikibu , a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Shōshi , the novel deals with the life and loves of Genji and the world of the Heian court after his death. The 12th-century artists of the e-maki version devised a system of pictorial conventions that convey visually the emotional content of each scene. In the second half of the century, a different, livelier style of continuous narrative illustration became popular. The Ban Dainagon Ekotoba (late 12th century),
29280-568: The years between 794 and 1185, when the Kamakura shogunate was established at the end of the Genpei War . The period is further divided into the early Heian and the late Heian, or Fujiwara era , the pivotal date being 894, the year imperial embassies to China were officially discontinued. Early Heian art: In reaction to the growing wealth and power of organized Buddhism in Nara, the priest Kūkai (best known by his posthumous title Kōbō Daishi, 774–835) journeyed to China to study Shingon ,
29463-548: Was "never happy", while his father is perhaps best characterized by his inventions: sometimes idealistic, such as a diesel-fueled submarine that gave off exhaust bubbles, the senior Cage being uninterested in an undetectable submarine; others revolutionary and against the scientific norms, such as the "electrostatic field theory" of the universe. John Cage Sr. taught his son that "if someone says 'can't' that shows you what to do." In 1944–45 Cage wrote two small character pieces dedicated to his parents: Crete and Dad . The latter
29646-468: Was also used (along with nested proportions) for the large piano work Music of Changes (1951), only here material would be selected from the charts by using the I Ching . All of Cage's music since 1951 was composed using chance procedures, most commonly using the I Ching . For example, works from Music for Piano were based on paper imperfections: the imperfections themselves provided pitches, coin tosses and I Ching hexagram numbers were used to determine
29829-526: Was an inventor, and his mother, Lucretia ("Crete") Harvey (1881–1968), worked intermittently as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times . The family's roots were deeply American: in a 1976 interview, Cage mentioned that George Washington was assisted by an ancestor named John Cage in the task of surveying the Colony of Virginia . Cage described his mother as a woman with "a sense of society" who
30012-403: Was central to the SAC creators' approach, which proved to be a complex undertaking, as Japanese avant-garde artists both idolized and destabilized the dominant cultural discourse created by figures such as Cage and Rauschenberg. The Sōgetsu Art Center (SAC) was founded in 1958 and directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara , who was then known as an avant-garde film director. He received permission to use
30195-530: Was displeased with the results and left the finished pieces behind when he left. Cage's association with theater also started in Europe: during a walk in Seville he witnessed, in his own words, "the multiplicity of simultaneous visual and audible events all going together in one's experience and producing enjoyment." Cage returned to the United States in 1931. He went to Santa Monica, California , where he made
30378-407: Was first published by Wesleyan University Press. Cage's parents died during the decade: his father in 1964, and his mother in 1969. Cage had their ashes scattered in Ramapo Mountains , near Stony Point, and asked for the same to be done to him after his death. Cage's work from the sixties features some of his largest and most ambitious, not to mention socially utopian pieces, reflecting the mood of
30561-433: Was focused around the Tōdai-ji in Nara. Constructed as the headquarters for a network of temples in each of the provinces, the Tōdaiji is the most ambitious religious complex erected in the early centuries of Buddhist worship in Japan. Appropriately, the 16.2-m (53-ft) Buddha (completed 752) enshrined in the main Buddha hall, or Daibutsuden , is a Rushana Buddha, the figure that represents the essence of Buddhahood, just as
30744-492: Was invited by Kathan Brown of Crown Point Press to engage in printmaking, and Cage would go on to produce series of prints every year until his death; these, together with some late watercolors , constitute the largest portion of his extant visual art. In 1979 Cage's Empty Words was first published by Wesleyan University Press. In 1987, Cage completed a piece called Two , for flute and piano, dedicated to performers Roberto Fabbriciani and Carlo Neri. The title referred to
30927-547: Was involved in relationships with Don Sample and with architect Rudolph Schindler 's wife Pauline when he met Xenia, he fell in love immediately. Cage and Kashevaroff were married in the desert at Yuma, Arizona , on June 7, 1935. The newly married couple first lived with Cage's parents in Pacific Palisades , then moved to Hollywood. During 1936–38 Cage changed numerous jobs, including one that started his lifelong association with modern dance: dance accompanist at
31110-400: Was married to Ichiyanagi at the time), which indicated the end of the performance. These performances brought about what is now remembered as "John Cage shock" among contemporary musicians in Japan. However, by understanding the meeting of the "happening" and Japanese avant-garde practices of "ceremony" at the SAC, this idea of "John Cage shock" can be debated: the degree of direct influence of
31293-493: Was not interested enough in architecture to dedicate his life to it. He then took up painting, poetry and music. It was in Europe that, encouraged by his teacher Lazare Lévy , he first heard the music of contemporary composers (such as Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith ) and finally got to know the music of Johann Sebastian Bach , which he had not experienced before. After several months in Paris, Cage's enthusiasm for America
31476-494: Was not thinking of composition. During high school, one of his music teachers was Fannie Charles Dillon . By 1928, though, Cage was convinced that he wanted to be a writer. He graduated that year from Los Angeles High School as a valedictorian , having also in the spring given a prize-winning speech at the Hollywood Bowl proposing a day of quiet for all Americans. By being "hushed and silent," he said, "we should have
31659-399: Was of no use to a writer" after an incident described in his 1991 autobiographical statement: I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that
31842-709: Was often the case that films would accompany the jazz performances, or that composers were contribute scores to the films. In this way, the SAC is often considered to be a place where the boundaries between genres dissolved through collaboration. The multimedia stage experiments at the SAC arguably helped give birth to so-called intermedia art in the late 1960s. Intermedia experiments of the late 1960s pushed beyond collaborations across artistic genres - they used multiple genres (and often integrated new technologies) to create projects that interrogated broad shifts occurring in Japanese environment, culture, and institutions. Several key early experiments in intermedia actually took place at
32025-471: Was one ... of course he's not a composer, but he's an inventor—of genius." Cage would later adopt the "inventor" moniker and deny that he was in fact a composer. At some point in 1934–35, during his studies with Schoenberg, Cage was working at his mother's arts and crafts shop, where he met artist Xenia Andreyevna Kashevaroff . She was an Alaskan -born daughter of a Russian priest; her work encompassed fine bookbinding , sculpture and collage . Although Cage
32208-626: Was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde . Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance , mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham , who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives. Cage's teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1933–35), both known for their radical innovations in music, but Cage's major influences lay in various East and South Asian cultures . Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in
32391-521: Was opposed to Cage's particular approach to the use of chance, and so were other composers who came to prominence during the 1950s, e.g. Karlheinz Stockhausen . During this time Cage was also teaching at the avant-garde Black Mountain College just outside Asheville, North Carolina . Cage taught at the college in the summers of 1948 and 1952 and was in residence the summer of 1953. While at Black Mountain College in 1952, he organized what has been called
32574-491: Was published years later. Another new direction, also taken in 1987, was opera: Cage produced five operas, all sharing the same title Europera , in 1987–91. Europeras I and II require greater forces than III , IV and V , which are on a chamber scale. They were commissioned by the Frankfurt Opera to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday, and according to music critic Mark Swed , they took "an enormous effort on
32757-553: Was revived after he read Walt Whitman 's Leaves of Grass – he wanted to return immediately, but his parents, with whom he regularly exchanged letters during the entire trip, persuaded him to stay in Europe for a little longer and explore the continent. Cage started traveling, visiting various places in France, Germany, and Spain, as well as Capri and, most importantly, Majorca , where he started composing. His first compositions were created using dense mathematical formulas, but Cage
32940-447: Was selected only based on whether it contains the note necessary for the melody, and so the rest of the notes do not form any directional harmony. Concerto for prepared piano (1950–51) used a system of charts of durations, dynamics, melodies, etc., from which Cage would choose using simple geometric patterns. The last movement of the concerto was a step towards using chance procedures, which Cage adopted soon afterwards. A chart system
33123-416: Was simple selection of pitch range and pitches from that range, using chance procedures; the music has been linked to Cage's anarchic leanings. One (i.e., the eleventh piece for a single performer), completed in early 1992, was Cage's first and only foray into film. Cage conceived his last musical work with Michael Bach Bachtischa : "ONE13" for violoncello with curved bow and three loudspeakers, which
33306-415: Was the Yayoi people, named for the district in Tokyo where remnants of their settlements first were found. These people, arriving in Japan about 300 BCE, brought their knowledge of wetland rice cultivation, the manufacture of copper weapons and bronze bells ( dōtaku ), and wheel-thrown, kiln-fired ceramics . The third stage in Japanese prehistory, the Kofun period (c. 300 – 710 AD), represents
33489-446: Was their world that they could not conceive of Paradise as being much different. They created a new form of Buddha hall, the Amida hall, which blends the secular with the religious, and houses one or more Buddha images within a structure resembling the mansions of the nobility. The Hō-ō-dō (Phoenix Hall, completed 1053) of the Byōdō-in , a temple in Uji to the southeast of Kyoto, is the exemplar of Fujiwara Amida halls. It consists of
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