John Cage Exhibition at Washington National Gallery

John Cage: 10 Stones 2, 1989
color spitbite aquatint and sugarlift on smoked Whatman paper
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
gift of Kathan Brown, 1996
(http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/timage_f?object=97462&image=70785&c=)
no copyright infringement intended

John Cage has been, as we know, the Great Master of Indeterminacy, and he devised complicated creative strategies that were dependent on chance outcomes dictated by I Ching. By ceding key formal decisions to chance, Cage sought to avoid expressing personal taste and intention. His commitment to indeterminacy as a creative strategy proved to be a wellspring of beauty.

(http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/cageinfo.shtm)

Well, his passion for using chance strategies in the artistic creation went over the borders of musical composition. An exhibition (John Cage: Rocks, Paper, Fire) opened these days at Washington DC National Gallery of Art features six prints of Cage, from the gallery collection, and is exploring his experimental approach to creating visual art. The exhibition highlights Cage's unconventional utilization of fire as a printmaking medium and his systematic employment of stones as templates for tracing.

(http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/cageinfo.shtm)

(John Cage)

(Washington DC National Gallery of Art)

(Contemporary Art)