Book Description
Sounds of the Inner Eye explores the artistic and biographical connection among three of the Pacific Northwestís most significant and highly respected artists.

Mark Tobey, often aligned with the abstract expressionists, was a pioneer in integrating elements of Asian art into mystical, calligraphic paintings. Morris Graves, known as something of an art world maverick, combined Eastern religious beliefs and a deep appreciation of the natural world in his work, focusing initially on the Northwestís birds and vegetation. John Cage, an avant-garde composer, philosopher, writer, and printmaker, began his visual creations with graphic representations of musical scores, and then evolved to include printmaking, drawing, and watercolor.

Sounds of the Inner Eye explores the lives and careers of these three men who were instrumental in leading a community of artists, patrons, and scholars into a deeper understanding of the potential and power of art and, in turn, had a large impact on much of what followed in modern art in America. Known as the Northwest Mystics, they were influenced by Eastern philosophies and the natural beauty of the Pacific Rim. Their legendary nickname has remained over time, helping to establish the Northwest as a center for artistic talent, worthy of the admiration of the international art community. ... Read more

Book Description
"I was obliged to find a radical way to work -- to get at the real, at the root of the matter," John Cage says in this trio of dialogues, completed just days before his death. His quest for the root of the matter led him beyond the bounds of the conventional in all his musical, written, and visual pieces. The resulting expansion of the definition of art -- with its concomitant emphasis on innovation and invention--earned him a reputation as one of America's most influential contemporary artists.

Joan Retallack's conversations with Cage represent the first consideration of his artistic production in its entirety, across genres. Informed by the perspective of age, Cage's comments range freely from his theories of chance and indeterminate composition to his long-time collaboration with Merce Cunningham to the aesthetics of his multimedia works. A composer for whom the whole world -- with its brimming silences and anarchic harmonies -- was a source of music, Cage once claimed, "There is no noise, only sounds." As these interviews attest, that penchant for testing traditions reached far beyond his music. His lifelong project, Retallack writes in her comprehensive introduction, was "dislodging cultural authoritarianism and gridlock by inviting surprising conjunctions within carefully delimited frameworks and processes." Consummate performer to the end, Cage delivers here just such a conjunction -- a tour de force that provides new insights into the man and a clearer view of the status of art in the 20th century.

CONTRIBUTORS:Joan Retallack. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Excellent!!
If you are familiar with Cage's art, you will love this account of Cages views on art and life. Joan Retallack's compilation of interviews and thoughts are precious and informative, to those of us who are fond of Cage's work and thinking. Great writing. If you are not familiar with John Cage, where have you been?... Well, it is not late to start. Excellent book.

a valuable document
Joan Retallack, a long-time friend and colleague of John Cage, has done us the favor of publishing this series of conversations between the two of them.These conversations (for they lack any conventional formality that might render them 'interviews'), which took place not long before Cage's death in 1992, run the gamut of topics.Through their amiable banter, one gets a great sense of what was going on in the oft-misunderstood artist's mind--especially as regards his fixation on chance operations and the I Ching.The talks also give ample insight into Cage's writing and visual art, practices for which he is lesser known. When not provoking thought about Cage himself, the two (and I mean both of them equally; Retallack has a meticulously rich and compelling mind, and expresses many enlightening points-of-view herself) have revealing conversations about everything from Duchamp to Joyce, Buckminster Fuller to the Koran.

Perhaps the most interesting and rare aspect of the book is the pervasive inclusion of the environmental and more mundane details of the conversations.She is careful to note the frequent occasions when Cage laughed, what he might have been cooking that day, interactions with an artist who stopped by to fix a bookshelf as a favor to Cage and to Merce Cunningham. Especially valuable is the penultimate conversation, when we are made privy to the beginning of Cage's composition process, as he begins to write a new piece on the spot with cellist Michael Bach.These insights into Cage's daily domestic life are perhaps the most revealing aspects of the book into his personality and philosophies.

For those familiar with Cage, this is a must-read.If you are skeptical or confused about his work, these talks will clarify a lot for you. If you have yet to be exposed to Cage, I recommend this book highly as an accurate and exhaustive portrait.

good stuff from precious minds
Joan Retallack is immensely gifted.If you're familiar with John Cage,you'll like this book. If you're not too familiar with John Cage, well, Ihave someone I'd like you to meet.

This is entertaining, compelling,thought-provoking stuff. I can think of few other people who are so mindful of WORD USAGE, or in this case, I guess, WORD "USCAGE."Manyinsights in this book. I recommend it highly.

Charming, delightful, thought-provoking
I know nothing about music, but I loved this book! Cage's conversations brim with humor, wisdom, and amazing insights into every subject under the sun. It's an enormous pleasure to spend a few hours "in hiscompany" by reading this book. ... Read more

Book Description
The writings gathered here span more than fifty years of Cagean thought and creativity, from the late 30s to the early 90s. ... Read more

Book Description
American composer John Cage (1912-1992) was without doubt one of the most important and influential figures in twentieth-century music. He spent much of his career in pursuit of an unusual goal--"giving up control so that sounds can be sounds", as he put it. As well as composing around 300 works, he was also a prolific performer, writer, poet, and visual artist. This Companion celebrates the richness and diversity of Cage's achievements and provides readers with a fully rounded portrait of a fascinating figure. ... Read more

Book Description
This book brings together for the first time Moira Roth's influential articles, lectures and interviews on the two men who embodied the very spirit of the avant-garde: Marcel Duchamp and John Cage.
Cage, who died in 1992, and Duchamp, who died in 1968, seemed to live on the permissive border of modernism, and later, of postmodernism. The artists have for almost thirty years fascinated, irritated, inspired, and daunted the author of these essays - Moira Roth.
At first they were an inspiration for her writing and teaching then, with their gradual transformation into 'classical' figures, she felt compelled to reconsider and re-evaluate them. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great!
The more you read, the more you can enter into Duchamp's world!This one must definitly be one in your Duchamp's collection. Make yourself "READY MADE" ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Book Description
Conversing with Cage draws on over 150 interviews with John Cage conducted over four decades to draw a full picture of his life and art.Filled with the witty aphorisms that have made Cage as famous as an esthetic philosopher as a composer, the book offers both an introduction to Cage's way of thinking and a rich gathering of his many thoughts on art, life, and music.
John Cage is perhaps this century's most radical classical composer.From his famous "silent" piece (4'33") to his proclamation that "all sound is music," Cage stretched the aesthetic boundaries of what could be performed in the modern concert hall.But, more than that, Cage was a provocative cultural figure, who played a key role in inspiring scores of other artists-and social philosophers-in the second half of the 20th century.Through his life and work, he created revolutions in thinking about art, and its relationship to the world around us.
Conversing with Cage is the ideal introduction to this world, offering in the artist's own words his ideas about life and art.It will appeal to all fans of this mythic figure on the American scene, as well as anyone interested in better understanding 20th century modernism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

"art is either a complaint or do something else"
i consider this book to be the most valuable resource, in terms of art (art being all artistic medium) theory, that one can find. richard kostelanetz is a superb editor, and the book is organized to the infinitessimal of degrees. the book consists of a compendium of interviews with cage, conducted by various peoples, spanning about forty years. this book is a precise method through which to understand the means that led to cage's understanding of art and life. in that regard it serves as a fundamental piece of learning material because he divulges what he knows and how he came to know it, rather than how he feels.

excellent book for those wanting to know about Cage's ideas
This book is a collection of interviews with John Cage, the late avant garde composer who was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. The interviews span nearly a half century and give a cogent idea of Cage's thought on music, art, education, politics, and social revision.

If you are curious about why a composer would write music that is "silent", why he would use chance, nonintention, and denounce music as communication, this is a good book to begin an overview of Cage's philosophy of art.

It also shows that Cage's musical thought was not monolithic, but changed several times in the course of his life, as did his music. ... Read more

Book Description
The experimental composer John Cage (1912-1992) is best known for his works in percussion, prepared piano, and electronic music, but he is also acknowledged to be one of the most significant figures in 20th century theatre. In Cage's work in theatre composition there is a blurring of the distinctions between music, dance, literature, art and everyday life. Here, William Fetterman examines the majority of those compositions by Cage which are audial as well as visual in content, beginning with his first work in this genre in 1952, and continuing through 1992.
Much of the information in this study comes from previously undocumented material discovered among the unpublished scores and notes of Cage and his frequent collaborator David Tudor, as well as author's interviews with Cage and with individuals closely associated with his work, including David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, Bonnie Bird, Mary Caroline Richards, and Ellsworth Snyder. ... Read more

Book Description
Contributions by Joachim Kaak, Corinna Thierolf. ... Read more

Book Description
The New Grove Dictionary of Music has said of John Cage that he "had a greater impact on world music than any other American composer in the twentieth century," and his musical thinking forms a whole with his writing. For the Birds is a book, a dialogue and an event all at once. The initial conversations were recorded in France between 1968 and 1978 and were then reconstructed, reedited and commented upon by Cage. The final text, with footnotes and asides added over the years, is prefaced by a typographical celebration of his ideas compiled by Cage himself.

This ebullient collection of questions and answers covers a wide variety of topics. Cage's great wit and intelligence are allowed to range across such subjects as his own music and texts, mushrooms, chess, James Joyce, Mao, Thoreau, Satie, electronic music, the prepared piano, Zen, the environment, technology, politics and economics.

John Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912. He studied music with Adolf Weiss, Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, and he has shared ideas with Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miro and Max Ernst, as well as such prophets as Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller. He was music director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for decades and held a number of academic posts. Cage was a composer, poet, graphic artist, teacher and critic. He died in New York in 1992.

"He is not a composer, he's an inventor -- of genius."--Arnold Schoenberg ... Read more

Book Description

Without doubt the most influential American composer of the last half century, John Cage has had an enormous impact not only on music but on art, literature, the performing arts, and aesthetic thought in general. His insistent exploration of "nonintention" and his fruitful merging of Western and Eastern traditions have made him a powerful force in the world of the avant-garde.

There have never been lectures like these: delivered at Harvard in 1988-89 as the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, they were more like performances, as the audience heard them. Cage calls them "mesostics," a literary form generated by chance (in this case computerized I-Ching chance) operations. Using the computer as an oracle in conjunction with a large source text, he happens upon ideas, which produce more ideas. Chance, and not Cage, makes the choices and central decisions. Such a form is rooted, Cage tells us in his introduction, in the belief that "all answers answer all questions."

Acting as a kind of counterpoint to the six texts here are transcripts (edited by Cage) of the provocative question-and-answer seminars that followed each presentation. Included with the book are two audiocassettes, one of Cage reading a mesostic (IV), allowing the listener to experience it as it was delivered, and one with a lively selection from the question-and-answer seminars that conveys the flavor of the event. The illustrations consist of fifteen different chance-determined prints from a single negative by Robert Mahon of the first autograph page of Cage's Sixteen Dances (1951).

I-VI is, in short, an experience of John Cage, where silences become words and words become silences, in arrangements that will disconcert and exercise our minds.

Customer Reviews (1)

peRformAnce coMbusTiOns of fragments,WoRdS
The various books, collections of pieces, essays, mesostics, cooking recipes,concert reports and performance works Cage had published throughout his long life have for many been more important than his music. (Cage never claimed) to have written music only/merely creating a more intense/extense hearing situation. He (himself when queried said) he never listens to music,recordings,but the sounds (as we all know now) that are all around us.Marvelous textures./ We simply need the committment to listen,to be committed to unitentionality,purposelessness. It is where divine intwervention/ inspiration or something similar an import which may or may not occur/possibly.

This rather large work "I - VI" is the summary/documentation of the prestigious Norton Lectures Series from 1988-89 at Harvard University. Time was when Cage was considered a joke by many, But now he is an American icon,honored/revered at every established citadel of academia.

Mesostics(which is the primary pages here)(pages 9 to 420) is(are) a kind of writing(of poetry)(esSays)(performance), it is as close the (English language) can get to Japanese,reading verticaly as well as horizontally. And that is what you need to do here most of the time,for sometimes a key word will run like a spine down the center of the page making some(or not) coherence with the remaining fragments you may(or may not) encounter. These (six(VI) sections) are like a performance (work),read in any order and any amount of it/ I found myself reading the particles of and complete words aloud for pleasure, skipping, letting (my eye) wander freely across the page, for non-meaning, or simply a combination and admixtures,combustions and consonant explosions which I've never encountered before. Whether (that is the correct) way is beside the point, for if you are looking for discrete meanings, well you will find it in bleak,cold fragmentariness. There are passages on the very bottom of each page, the question and answer section, where you may learn particular ways of playing Cage's sometimes rather difficult music. You never (improvise in) Cage, actually there is very little performing freedom. Once you understand a performing corridor or process you cannot digress from it. I found myself instantly at the bottom of the page most of the time,for Cage is an interesting storyteller, and a way of highlighting (actual) experiences from life.

There is an (orange) CD that accompanies this book A reading of mesostic(by John Cage)number 4/ IV. Cage speaks/recites in a frail baritone/ rich voice/ committed to the cause.

WriTings drawn from WitTgenstein( a laTe interest),Thoreau,Joyce,McCluhan and daily newspapers are combined in fifteen compositional meThods/strucTurs/intenTion/discipline/noTation/indeTterminacy/interpeneTraion/imiTationT/all this comes at the end and can be read lefT to riGht. ... Read more