John Cage was a singularly inventive, highly influential, and much beloved American composer, writer, philosopher, and visual artist.
Cage’s Satie: Composition for Museum is a multi-sensory exhibition of works by John Cage that celebrates his enduring love of the French composer Erik Satie. Cage was indebted to many artists throughout his life, James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, and Henry David Thoreau among them. Of all the individuals of influence, however, Erik Satie holds a place of particular reverence and honor.
The present exhibition takes a fresh approach to the presentation of John Cage’s oeuvre by foregoing the usual emphasis on precious artifacts in favor of sounded works.
Curator: Laura Kuhn
Laura Kuhn is the director of the John Cage Trust, in New York.
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Cage's Satie: Composition for museum is analogous to a piece of music on two levels. Its featured works are the musical tribute paid by Cage to Satie throughout hi life.
The first floor brings 12 compositions into a spatialized and randomized remix: Cheap Imitation, Chorals, Etcetera, Extended Lullaby, Four3, Furniture Music Etcetera, Socrate, Sports (Perpetual Tango and Swinging), Song Books (Solos for Voice 3-92), Sonnekus2, Two6, and Letter(s) to Erik Satie. This audio collage for the ears is complemented by associated materials for the eyes: rare video footage of works from collaborative projects with the legendary American choreographer Merce Cunningham and manipulated scanned images drawn from associated scores and manuscripts from C.F. Peters/Peters Edition and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
The second floor showcases two additional Satie inspirations: James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet (1982), Cage’s whimsical radio play cast here into a new interactive sound installation, and The First Meeting of the Satie Society (1985-1992), Cage’s stunning late-life collaborative merger of poetry, performance, visual art, sculpture, and music. This work was conceived as a collection of “presents” for Erik Satie, an invitation by John Cage to his esteemed artist friends to fill a Marcel Duchamp-inspired cracked glass valise with words and images bound into eight hand made books. Contributors in the visual aspects include Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, and Cage himself. Also on view is Cage’s “Satie Memorabilia,” an eclectic collection that includes his rarely seen facsimile of Vexations.
Informations supplémentaire programmation MAC
360° views of the exhibition
Documents
Soundtrack of the Cage’s Satie exhibtion
Date created: 07/13/2020
Changed date: 05/05/2023
72 Mo / 01'16
