John Cage, “New River Watercolor, Series I (#3), watercolor on parchment paper, 1988 (courtesy National Academy Museum)
National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through January 13, $15, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-369-4880
www.nationalacademy.org
The National Academy continues its transformation with the cleverly curated multimedia exhibition “John Cage: The Sight of Silence,” held in conjunction with the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the seminal avant-garde artist. A controversial minimalist composer, music theoretician, Zen practitioner, I Ching follower, and longtime partner of Merce Cunningham, Cage was also a watercolorist, and the National Academy show features more than four dozen of his paintings, drawings, and etchings made primarily during his residency at the Mountain Lake Workshop in Virginia in the 1980s and early ’90s. A short documentary reveals Cage’s fascinating process using local stones, feathers, and the same ideas of chance and complex numbering systems he employed in creating his musical compositions, resulting in gentle, spiritual works with colorful circles on paper sometimes prepared with smoke. A vitrine contains some of the elements Cage used for the pieces, which were hung by the National Academy on the walls of two galleries by chance as well, through a series of four rolls of the dice. The show also includes Cage’s 1969 Plexiglas homage to Duchamp, “Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel”; one of his unique scores; and a 1976 self-portrait. “The Sight of Silence” is supplemented by several video presentations, highlighted by a 1960 appearance Cage made on the TV game show I’ve Got a Secret, performing “Water Walk,” a composition for water pitcher, iron pipe, bathtub, goose call, bottle of wine, electric mixer, whistle, sprinkling can, ice cubes, two cymbals, mechanical fish, quail call, rubber duck, tape recorder, vase of roses, seltzer siphon, five radios, bathtub, and grand piano. In addition, another monitor plays the John Cage section of Peter Greenaway’s 1983 documentary Four American Composers, which captures unusual live performances, interviews, and Cage’s interstitial “Indeterminacy Stories.” It all makes for a charming show that is likely to surprise Cage devotees as well as those unfamiliar with his oeuvre.
John Cage performs “Water Walk” on I’VE GOT A SECRET
“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time,” Cage once explained. “There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.” The National Academy is making sure there is always something to see and hear with “Chance Encounters,” a series of public programs ranging from book readings and panel discussions to live dance and concerts. Among the special events: On October 28 at 3:00, William Anastasi, who played chess with Cage every day for nearly fifteen years, will read from The Cage Dialogues: A Memoir; on November 10, Joan Retallack, who wrote Musicage: Cage Muses on Words Art Music with Cage, will present “Conversation with Cage”; on December 1, exhibition cocurator Ray Kass will direct a performance of Cage’s “STEPS” by Stephen Addis; and on January 5, Du Yun will perform “Water Walk.”