Name	Marcel Duchamp
Caption	Marcel Duchamp playing chess in 1952. (Kay Bell Reynal photo in the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art.)
Birthname	Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp
Birthdate	July 28, 1887
Birth place	Blainville-Crevon, France
Deathdate	October 02, 1968
Deathplace	Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
Nationality	French, became a U.S. citizen in 1955
Field	Painting, sculpture, film
Movement	Dada, Surrealism
Works	Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912)Fountain (1917)The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23)Etant donnés (1946-66)

Marcel Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968; ) was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period.

A playful man, Duchamp challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much by writing, but through subversive actions such as dubbing a urinal art and naming it Fountain. He produced relatively few artworks, while moving quickly through the avant-garde circles of his time.

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.

Life

, and Raymond Duchamp-Villon in the garden of Jacques Villon's studio in Puteaux, France, 1914, (Smithsonian Institution collections.)]] Marcel Duchamp was born in Blainville-Crevon Seine-Maritime in the Haute-Normandie region of France, and grew up in a family that enjoyed cultural activities. The art of painter and engraver Emile Nicolle, his maternal grandfather, filled the house, and the family liked to play chess, read books, paint, and make music together.

Of Eugene and Lucie Duchamp's seven children, one died as an infant and four became successful artists. Marcel Duchamp was the brother of:

Jacques Villon (1875–1963), painter, printmaker

Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876–1918), sculptor

Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti (1889–1963), painter.

As a child, with his two older brothers already away from home at school in Rouen, Duchamp was close to his sister Suzanne, who was a willing accomplice in games and activities conjured by his fertile imagination. At 10 years old, Duchamp followed in his brothers' footsteps when he left home and began schooling at the Lycée Corneille in Rouen. For the next 7 years, he was locked into an educational regime which focused on intellectual development. Though he was not an outstanding student, his best subject was mathematics and he won two mathematics prizes at the school. He also won a prize for drawing in 1903, and at his commencement in 1904 he won a coveted first prize, validating his recent decision to become an artist.

He learned academic drawing from a teacher who unsuccessfully attempted to protect his students from Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and other avant-garde influences. However, Duchamp's true artistic mentor was his brother Jacques Villon, whose fluid and incisive style he sought to imitate. At 14, his first serious art attempts were drawings and watercolors depicting his sister Suzanne in various poses and activities. That summer he also painted landscapes in an Impressionist style using oils.

Early work

Duchamp's early art works align with Post-Impressionist styles. He experimented with classical techniques and subjects, as well as with Cubism and Fauvism. When he was later asked about what had influenced him at the time, Duchamp cited the work of Symbolist painter Odilon Redon, whose approach to art was not outwardly anti-academic, but quietly individual.

He studied art at the Académie Julian from 1904 to 1905, but preferred playing billiards to attending classes. During this time Duchamp drew and sold cartoons which reflected his ribald humor. Many of the drawings use visual and/or verbal puns. Such play with words and symbols engaged his imagination for the rest of his life.

In 1905 he began his compulsory military service, working for a printer in Rouen. There he learned typography and printing processes – skills he would use in his later work.

Due to his eldest brother Jacques' membership in the prestigious Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture Duchamp's work was exhibited in the 1908 Salon d'Automne. The following year his work was featured in the Salon des Indépendants. Of Duchamp's pieces in the show, critic Guillaume Apollinaire--who was to become a friend—criticized what he called "Duchamp's very ugly nudes." Duchamp also became lifelong friends with exuberant artist Francis Picabia after meeting him at the 1911 Salon d' Automne, and Picabia proceeded to introduce him to a lifestyle of fast cars and 'high' living.

In 1911, at Jacques' home in Puteaux, the brothers hosted a regular discussion group with other artists and writers including Picabia, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Roger de la Fresnaye, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Juan Gris, and Alexander Archipenko. The group came to be known as the Puteaux Group, and the artists' work was dubbed Orphic cubism. Uninterested in the Cubists' seriousness or in their focus on visual matters, Duchamp did not join in discussions of Cubist theory, and gained a reputation of being shy. However, that same year he painted in a Cubist style, and added an impression of motion by using repetitive imagery.

During this period Duchamp's fascination with transition, change, movement and distance became manifest, and like many artists of the time, he was intrigued with the concept of depicting a "Fourth dimension" in art.

Works from this period included his first "machine" painting, Coffee Mill (Moulin à café) (1911), which he gave to his brother Raymond Duchamp-Villon. The Coffee Mill shows similarity to the "grinder" mechanism of the Large Glass he was to paint years later.

In his 1911Portrait of Chess Players (Portrait de joueurs d'echecs) there is the Cubist overlapping frames and multiple perspectives of his two brothers playing chess, but to that Duchamp added elements conveying the unseen mental activity of the players. (Notably, "échec" is French for "failure".) (1912). Oil on canvas. 57 7/8" x 35 1/8". Philadelphia Museum of Art.]]

Nude Descending a Staircase No.2

Duchamp's first work to provoke significant controversy was Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Nu descendant un escalier n° 2) (1912). The painting depicts the mechanistic motion of a nude, with superimposed facets, similar to motion pictures. It shows elements of both the fragmentation and synthesis of the Cubists, and the movement and dynamism of the Futurists.

He first submitted the piece to appear at the Cubist Salon des Indépendants, but jurist Albert Gleizes asked Duchamp's brothers to have him voluntarily withdraw the painting, or to paint over the title that he had painted on the work and rename it something else. Duchamp's brothers did approach him with Gleizes' request, but Duchamp quietly refused. Of the incident Duchamp later recalled, "I said nothing to my brothers. But I went immediately to the show and took my painting home in a taxi. It was really a turning point in my life, I can assure you. I saw that I would not be very much interested in groups after that."

He later submitted the painting to the 1913 "Armory Show" in New York City. The exhibition was officially named the International Exhibition of Modern Art, displayed works of American artists, and was also the first major exhibition of modern trends coming out of Paris. American show-goers, accustomed to realistic art, were scandalized, and the Nude was at the center of much of the controversy.

Leaving "retinal art" behind

At about this time, Duchamp read Max Stirner's philosophical tract, The Ego and Its Own, the study of which he considered another turning point in his artistic and intellectual development. He called it "...a remarkable book ... which advances no formal theories, but just keeps saying that the ego is always there in everything."

Duchamp also noted the stage adaptation of Raymond Roussel's 1910 novel, Impressions d'Afrique which featured plots that turned in on themselves, word play, surrealistic sets and humanoid machines. He credited the drama with having radically changed his approach to art, and having inspired him to begin the creation of his The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, also known as The Large Glass.

While in Germany in 1912 he painted the last of his Cubist-like paintings and he started "Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors" image, and began making plans for The Large Glass — scribbling short notes to himself, sometimes with hurried sketches. It would be over 10 years before this piece was completed. Little else is known about the two-month stay in Germany except that the friend he visited was intent on showing him the sights and the nightlife.

Later that year he traveled with Picabia, Apollinaire and Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia through the Jura mountains, an adventure that Buffet-Picabia described as one of their "forays of demoralization, which were also forays of witticism and clownery ... the disintegration of the concept of art." Duchamp's notes from the trip avoid logic and sense, and have a surrealistic, mythical connotation.

Duchamp painted few canvases after 1912, and in those he did, he attempted to remove "painterly" effects, and instead to use a technical drawing approach.

His broad interests led him to an exhibition of aviation technology during this period, after which Duchamp said to his friend Constantin Brancusi, "Painting is washed up. Who will ever do anything better than that propeller? Tell me, can you do that?" Brancusi later sculpted bird forms, which U.S. Customs officials mistook for aviation parts and for which they attempted to collect import duties.

During this decade Duchamp began working as a librarian in the Bibliotèque Sainte-Geneviève, where he earned a living wage and withdrew from painting circles into scholarly realms. He studied math and physics – areas in which exciting new discoveries were taking place. The theoretical writings of Henri Poincaré particularly intrigued and inspired Duchamp. Poincaré postulated that the laws believed to govern matter were created solely by the minds that "understood" them and that no theory could be considered "true." "The things themselves are not what science can reach..., but only the relations between things. Outside of these relations there is no knowable reality", Poincaré wrote in 1902.

Duchamp's own art-science experiments began during his tenure at the library. To make one of his favorite pieces, 3 Standard Stoppages (3 stoppages étalon), he dropped three 1-meter lengths of thread onto prepared canvases, one at a time, from a height of 1 meter. The threads landed in three random undulating positions. He varnished them into place on the blue-black canvas strips and attached them to glass. He then cut three wood slats into the shapes of the curved strings, and put all the pieces into a croquet box. Three small leather signs with the title printed in gold were glued to each of the "stoppage" backgrounds. The piece appears to literally follow Poincaré's School of the Thread, part of a book on classical mechanics.

Work on The Large Glass continued into 1913, with his invention of inventing a repertoire of forms. He made notes, sketches and painted studies, and even drew some of his ideas on the wall of his apartment.

In his studio he mounted a bicycle wheel upside down onto a stool, spinning it occasionally just to watch it. Later he denied that its creation was purposeful, though it has come to be known as the first of his "Readymades". "I enjoyed looking at it," he said. "Just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in the fireplace."

Meanwhile, Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 scandalized Americans at the Armory Show, and the sale of all four of his paintings in the show financed his trip to America in 1915.

After World War I was declared in 1914, with his brothers and many friends in military service and himself exempted, Duchamp felt uncomfortable in Paris. He decided to emigrate to the then-neutral United States. To his surprise, he found he was a celebrity when he arrived in New York in 1915, where he quickly befriended art patron Katherine Dreier and artist Man Ray. Duchamp's circle included art patrons Louise and Walter Conrad Arensberg, actress and artist Beatrice Wood and Francis Picabia, as well as other avant-garde figures. Though he spoke little English, in the course of supporting himself by giving French lessons and through some library work, he quickly learned the language.

For two years the Arensbergs, who would remain his friends and patrons for 42 years, were the landlords of his studio. In lieu of rent, they agreed that his payment would be The Large Glass. An art gallery offered Duchamp $10,000 per year in exchange for all of his yearly production, but Duchamp declined the offer, preferring to work on The Large Glass.

Société Anonyme

Duchamp created the Société Anonyme in 1920, along with Katherine Dreier and Man Ray. This was the beginning of his life-long involvement in art dealing and collecting. The group collected modern art works, and arranged modern art exhibitions and lectures throughout the 1930s.

By this time Walter Pach, one of the coordinators of the 1913 Armory Show, sought Duchamp's advice on modern art. Beginning with Société Anonyme, Dreier also depended on Duchamp's counsel in gathering her collection, as did Arensberg. Later Peggy Guggenheim, Museum of Modern Art directors Alfred Barr and James Johnson Sweeney consulted with Duchamp on their modern art collections and shows.

Dada

1917]] New York Dada had a less serious tone than that of European Dadaism, and was not a particularly organized venture. Duchamp's friend Picabia connected with the Dada group in Zürich, bringing to New York the Dadaist ideas of absurdity and "anti-art." A group met almost nightly at the Arensberg home, or caroused in Greenwich Village. Together with Man Ray, Duchamp contributed his ideas and humor to the New York activities, many of which ran concurrent with the development of his Readymades and The Large Glass. They also worked on the concept of "found art."

The most prominent example of Duchamp's association with Dada was his submission of Fountain, a urinal, to the Society of Independent Artists exhibit in 1917. Artworks in the Independent Artists shows were not selected by jury, and all pieces submitted were displayed. However, the show committee insisted that Fountain was not art, and rejected it from the show. This caused an uproar amongst the Dadaists, and led Duchamp to resign from the board of the Independent Artists.

Along with Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood, Duchamp published a Dada magazine in New York, entitled The Blind Man, which included art, literature, humor and commentary.

When he returned to Paris after World War I, Duchamp did not participate in the Dada group.

Readymades

"Readymades" were found objects which Duchamp chose and presented as art. The first such object was Bicycle Wheel, an inverted bicycle wheel mounted on a stool, which Duchamp assembled in 1913. However, he did not coin the term "readymade" until 1915. }}

Bottle Rack (1914), a bottle drying rack signed by Duchamp, is considered to be the first "pure" readymade. Prelude to a Broken Arm (1915), a snow shovel, also called In Advance of the Broken Arm, followed soon after. His Fountain, a urinal signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt," shocked the art world in 1917. Fountain was selected in 2004 as "the most influential artwork of the 20th century" by 500 renowned artists and historians.

In 1919, Duchamp made a parody of the Mona Lisa by adorning a cheap reproduction of the painting with a mustache and goatee. To this he added the inscription L.H.O.O.Q., a phonetic game which, when read out loud in French quickly sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul". This can be translated as "She has a hot ass," implying that the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability. It may also have been intended as a Freudian joke, referring to Leonardo da Vinci's alleged homosexuality. Duchamp gave a "loose" translation of L.H.O.O.Q. as "there is fire down below" in a late interview with Arturo Schwarz.

According to Rhonda Roland Shearer, the apparent Mona Lisa reproduction is in fact a copy modeled partly on Duchamp's own face. Research published by Shearer also speculates that Duchamp himself may have created some of the objects which he claimed to have been "found."

The Large Glass

(1915-23) Philadelphia Museum of Art Collection]] Duchamp carefully created a masterpiece, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), working on the piece from 1915 to 1923, with the exception of periods in Buenos Aires and Paris in 1918 - 1920. He executed the work on two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. It combines chance procedures, plotted perspective studies, and laborious craftsmanship. His notes for the piece, published as The Green Box, reflect the creation of unique rules of physics, and a mythology which describes the work. He stated that his "hilarious picture" is intended to depict the erratic encounter between a bride and her nine bachelors.

Until 1969 when the Philadelphia Museum of Art revealed Duchamp's Etant donnés tableau, The Large Glass was thought to have been his last major work.

Kinetic works

Duchamp's interest in kinetic works can be discerned as early as the notes for The Large Glass and the Bicycle Wheel readymade, and despite losing interest in "retinal art," he retained interest in visual phenomena.

In 1920, with help from Man Ray, Duchamp built a motorized sculpture, Rotative plaques verre, optique de précision ("Rotary Glass Plates, Precision Optics"). The piece, which he did not consider to be art, involved a motor to spin pieces of rectangular glass on which were painted segments of a circle. When the apparatus spins, an optical illusion occurs, in which the segments appear to be closed concentric circles.

Man Ray set up equipment to photograph the initial experiment, but when they turned the machine on for the second time, a belt broke, and caught a piece of the glass, which after glancing off Man Ray's head, shattered into bits.

After moving back to Paris in 1923, at André Breton's urging and through the financing of Jacques Doucet, Duchamp built another optical device based on the first one - Rotative Demisphère, optique de précision (Rotary Demisphere, Precision Optics). This time the optical element was a globe cut in half, with black concentric circles painted on it. When it spins, the circles appear to move backwards and forwards in space. Duchamp asked that Doucet not exhibit the apparatus as art.

Rotoreliefs were the next phase of Duchamp's spinning works. To make the optical "play toys," he painted designs on flat cardboard circles and spun them on a phonographic turntable. When spinning, the flat disks appeared three-dimensional. He had a printer produce 500 sets of six of the designs, and set up a booth at a 1935 Paris inventors' show to sell them. The venture was a financial disaster, but some optical scientists thought they might be of use in restoring three-dimensional stereoscopic sight to people who have lost vision one eye.

In collaboration with Man Ray and Marc Allégret, Duchamp filmed early versions of the Rotoreliefs and they named the film Anémic Cinéma (1926).

Later, in Alexander Calder's studio in 1931, while looking at the sculptor's kinetic works, Duchamp suggested that these should be called "mobiles". Calder agreed to use this novel term in his upcoming show. To this day, sculptures of this type are called "mobiles."

Rrose Sélavy

(Marcel Duchamp). 1921. Photograph by Man Ray. Art Direction by Marcel Duchamp. Silver print. 5-7/8" x 3"-7/8". Philadelphia Museum of Art.]] "Rrose Sélavy," also spelled Rose Sélavy, was one of Duchamp's pseudonyms. The name, a pun, sounds like the French phrase "Eros, c'est la vie," which may be translated as "Eros, such is life." It has also been read as "arroser la vie" ("to make a toast to life").

Sélavy emerged in 1921 in a series of photographs by Man Ray showing Duchamp dressed as a woman. Through the 1920s Man Ray and Duchamp collaborated on more photos of Sélavy. Duchamp later used the name as the byline on written material and signed several creations with it. These included at least one sculpture, Why Not Sneeze Rrose Sélavy?. The sculpture, a type of readymade called an assemblage, consists of an oral thermometer, and several dozen small cubes of marble resembling sugar cubes inside a birdcage.

The inspiration for the name "Rrose Sélavy" may have been Belle da Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan's librarian of the Pierpont Morgan Library. Following the death of J.P. Morgan, Sr., Greene became the Library's director, working there for a total of forty-three years. Empowered by the Morgans, she built the library collection, buying and selling rare manuscripts, books and art.

Transition from art to chess

In 1918 Duchamp took leave of the New York art scene, interrupting his work on the Large Glass, and went to Buenos Aires, Argentina. He remained for nine months and often played chess. He even carved from wood his own chess set, with the assistance of a local craftsman who made the knights. He moved to Paris in 1919, and then back to the United States in 1920. Upon his return to Paris in 1923, Duchamp was, in essence, no longer a practicing artist. Instead, he played chess, which he studied for the rest of his life to the exclusion of most other activities.

Duchamp can be seen, very briefly, playing chess with Man Ray in the short film Entr'acte (1924) by René Clair. He designed the 1925 Poster for the Third French Chess Championship, and as a competitor in the event, finished at fifty percent (3-3, with two draws). Thus he earned the title of chess master. During this period his fascination with chess so distressed his first wife that she glued his pieces to the board. Duchamp continued to play in the French Championships and also in the Olympiads from 1928–1933, favoring hypermodern openings such as the Nimzo-Indian.

Sometime in the early 1930s, Duchamp reached the height of his ability, but realized that he had little chance of winning recognition in top-level chess. In following years, his participation in chess tournaments declined, but he discovered correspondence chess and became a chess journalist, writing weekly newspaper columns. While his contemporaries were achieving spectacular success in the art world by selling their works to high-society collectors, Duchamp observed, "I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position." On another occasion, Duchamp elaborated, "The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem.... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."

In 1932 Duchamp teamed with chess theorist Vitaly Halberstadt to publish L'opposition et cases conjuguées sont réconciliées (Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled), known as corresponding squares. This treatise describes the Lasker-Reichhelm position, an extremely rare type of position that can arise in the endgame. Using enneagram-like charts that fold upon themselves, the authors demonstrated that in this position, the most Black can hope for is a draw.

The theme of the "endgame" is important to an understanding of Duchamp's complex attitude towards his artistic career. Irish playwright Samuel Beckett was an associate of Duchamp, and used the theme as the narrative device for the 1957 play of the same name, "Endgame." In 1968, Duchamp played an artistically important chess match with avant-garde composer John Cage, at a concert entitled "Reunion." Music was produced by a series of photoelectric cells underneath the chessboard, triggered sporadically by normal game play.

On choosing a career in chess, Duchamp said, "If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted." Duchamp left a legacy to chess in the form of an enigmatic endgame problem he composed in 1943. The problem was included in the announcement for Julian Lev's gallery exhibition "Through the Big End of the Opera Glass," printed on translucent paper with the faint inscription: "White to play and win." Grandmasters and endgame specialists have since grappled with the problem, with most concluding that there is no solution.

Artistic involvement and marriages

Although Duchamp was no longer considered to be an active artist, he continued to consult with artists, art dealers and collectors. From 1925 he often traveled between France and the United States, and made New York's Greenwich Village his home in 1942.

In June 1927, Duchamp married Lydie Sarazin-Lavassor; however, they divorced six months later. It was rumored that Duchamp had chosen a marriage of convenience, because Sarazin-Lavassor was the daughter of a wealthy automobile manufacturer. Early in January 1928, Duchamp said that he could no longer bear the responsibility and confinement of marriage, and soon thereafter they were divorced.

From the mid-1930s onwards, he collaborated with the Surrealists, however, he did not join the movement despite the coaxing of André Breton. From then until 1944, together with Max Ernst, Eugenio Granell and Breton, Duchamp edited the Surrealist periodical VVV, and also served as an advisory editor for the magazine View, which featured him in its March 1945 edition, thus introducing him to a broader American audience.

In 1954, he and Alexina "Teeny" Sattler married, and they remained together until his death. Duchamp became a United States citizen in 1955.

His influence on the art world remained behind the scenes until the late 1950s, when he was "discovered" by young artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, who were eager to escape the dominance of Abstract Expressionism.

Interest in Duchamp was reignited in the 1960s, and he gained international public recognition. 1963 saw his first retrospective exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum, and in 1966 the Tate Gallery hosted a large exhibit of his work. Other major institutions, including the Philadelphia Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, followed, with large showings of Duchamp's work. He was invited to lecture on art and to participate in formal discussions, as well as sitting for interviews with major publications.

As the last surviving member of the Duchamp family of artists, in 1967 Duchamp helped to organize an exhibition in Rouen, France, called "Les Duchamp: Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp." Parts of this family exhibition were later shown again at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris.

Exhibition design

Duchamp was the designer of the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition, which was held at the Gallerie des Beaux-arts, Paris. The show featured more than 60 artists from different countries, including approximately 300 paintings, objects, collages, photographs and installations.

The surrealists wanted to create an exhibition which in itself would be a creative act, and called on Duchamp to do so. At the exhibition's entrance he placed Salvador Dalí's Rainy Taxi This work consisted of a taxicab rigged to produce a drizzle of water down the inside of the windows, a shark-headed creature in the driver's seat, and a blond mannequin crawling with live snails in the back. In this way Duchamp greeted entering patrons, who were in full evening dress.

Surrealist Street filled one side of the lobby with mannequins dressed by various surrealists. The main hall was a simulation of a dark subterranean cave with 1,200 coal bags suspended from the ceiling. Illumination was provided only by a single light bulb, so patrons were given flashlights with which to view the art.

An installation by Wolfgang Paalen was composed of oak leaves and a water-filled pond with water lilies and reeds, while the aroma of roasting coffee filled the air. Around midnight, the visitors witnessed the dancing shimmer of a sparsely dressed girl who suddenly arose from the reeds, jumped on a bed, shrieked hysterically, then disappeared just as quickly. Much to the surrealists' satisfaction the exhibition scandalized the viewers.

In 1942, for the First Papers of Surrealism show in New York, surrealists again called on Duchamp to design the exhibition. This time he wove a three-dimensional web of string throughout the rooms of the space, in some cases making it almost impossible to see the works. Duchamp made a secret arrangement with an associate's son to bring young friends to the opening of the show. When the finely dressed patrons arrived, they found a dozen children in athletic clothes kicking and passing balls, and skipping rope. Duchamp's design of the catalog for the show included "found," rather than posed, photographs of the artists.

, 1946-1966, mixed media, Philadelphia Museum of Art. This was posthumously and permanently installed in the museum in 1969]]

Etant donnés

Duchamp's final major art work surprised the art world that believed he had given up art for chess 25 years earlier. Entitled Etant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage ("Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas"), it is a tableau, visible only through a peep hole in a wooden door. A nude woman can be seen lying on her back with her face hidden, legs spread, and one hand holding a gas lamp in the air against a landscape backdrop. Duchamp had worked secretly on the piece from 1946 to 1966 in his Greenwich Village studio while even his closest friends thought he had abandoned art.

Death and burial

Marcel Duchamp died on October 2, 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, and is buried in the Rouen Cemetery, in Rouen, France. His grave bears the epitaph, "D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent;" or "Besides, it's always other people who die."

Legacy

A quotation erroneously attributed to Duchamp suggests a negative attitude toward later trends in 20th-century art:

However, this was actually written in 1961 by fellow Dadaist Hans Richter, in the second person, i.e. "You threw the bottle-rack...". Although a marginal note in the letter suggests that Duchamp generally approved of the statement, Richter did not make the distinction clear until many years later.

Duchamp's attitude was actually more favorable, as evidenced by another statement made in 1964:

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The Prix Marcel Duchamp (Marcel Duchamp Prize), established in 2000, is an annual award given to a young artist by the Centre Georges Pompidou. In 2004, as a testimony to the legacy of Duchamp's work to the art world, his Fountain was voted "most influential artwork of the 20th century" by a panel of prominent artists and art historians.

See also

Anti-art

History of painting

Western painting

Shock art

Notes

References

Tomkins, Calvin: Duchamp: A Biography, Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1996. ISBN 0-8050-5789-7

Seigel, Jerrold: The Private Worlds of Marcel Duchamp, University of California Press, 1995. ISBN 0-520-20038-1

Hulten, Pontus (editor): Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life, The MIT Press, 1993. ISBN 0-262-08225-X

Yves Arman: Marcel Duchamp plays and wins, Marcel Duchamp joue et gagne, Marval Press, 1984

Cabanne, Pierre: Dialogs with Marcel Duchamp, Da Capo Press, Inc., 1979 (1969 in French), ISBN 0-306-80303-8

Duchamp Bottles Belle Greene: Just Desserts For His Canning by Bonnie Jean Garner (with text boxes by Stephen Jay Gould)

Gibson, Michael: Duchamp-Dada, (in French, Nouvelles Editions Françaises-Casterman, 1990) International Art Book Award of the Vasari Prize in 1991.

Sanouillet, Michel and Peterson, Elmer: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. NY: Da Capo Press, 1989. ISBN 0-306-80341-0

Sanouillet, Michel and Matisse, Paul: Marcel Duchamp : Duchamp du signe suivi de Notes, Flammarion, 2008. ISBN 978-2-0801-1664-2

Catherine Perret Marcel Duchamp, le manieur de gravité, Ed. CNDP, Paris, 1998

Banz, Stefan (ed), Marcel Duchamp and the Forestay Waterfall, JRP-Ringier, Zürich, 2010. ISBN 978-3-03764-156-9

Further reading

Marc Décimo: Marcel Duchamp mis à nu. A propos du processus créatif (Marcel Duchamp Stripped Bare. Apropos of the creative Act), Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2004.

Marc Décimo:The Marcel Duchamp Library, perhaps (La Bibliothèque de Marcel Duchamp, peut-être), Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2001.

T.J. Demos, The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2007.

Lydie Fischer Sarazin-Levassor, A Marriage in Check. The Heart of the Bride Stripped by her Bachelor, even, Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2007.

External links

;Duchamp works

Philadelphia Museum of Art houses the Arensbergs' large collection of Duchamp's work. (website)

The Israel Museum has many of Duchamp's works in its Vera and Arturo Schwarz Collection of Dada and Surrealist Art. (website)

The Museum of Modern Art has many Duchamp works. (website)

An explanation about the "Roue de bicyclette" by Duchamp (website)

Dossier : Marcel Duchamp, Centre Pompidou

Philadelphia Museum of Art Portrait of Chess Players (Portrait de joueurs d'echecs) (1911).

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Green Box. Notes and studies for The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. (1915–1923)

Rotoreliefs (1920s)

Anémic Cinéma film (1926)

;Essays by Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp: The Creative Act (1957) Audio

;General resources

Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp Andrew Stafford: - animated explanations.

Marcel-Duchamp.com Étant donné - annual review published by L'association pour l'etude de Marcel Duchamp.

Toutfait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal

MarcelDuchamp.org - Personal website dedicated to Duchamp.

MarcelDuchamp.net - Art Science Research Laboratory site about researching Duchamp.

Marcel Duchamp - Olga's Gallery pages with biography and images.

Marcel Duchamp Rotoreliefs - animated.

Marcel Duchamp (DADA Companion) - the Online Research Companion.

Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Poraiture - online exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Marcel Duchamp: Cooler Than Warhol - A great multimedia presentation about Duchamp's history and work.

ChessGames.com">profile at ChessGames.com

;Essays about Duchamp

Rhonda Roland Shearer:">Marcel Duchamp's Impossible Bed and Other "Not" Readymade Objects: A Possible Route of Influence From Art To Science Rhonda Roland Shearer:

Duchamp is Dandy! Michael Beyer:

"Duchamp & his legacy" Hilton Kramer:, The New Criterion

"Peep show" Marcel Duchamp's "Étant donnés." Morgan Meis:, The Smart Set

;Audio and video

Voices of Dada, Futurism & Dada Reviewed and Surrealism Reviewed - readings by Duchamp on the audio CDs

UbuWeb - Music, lectures, and film

Duchamp's Legacy with Richard Hamilton and Sarat Maharaj from Tate Britain. (RealPlayer required.)

Aspen magazine (4:00)">Audio of Marcel Duchamp's 'Some texts from "A l'infinitif"' (1912-20). Recorded by Aspen magazine (4:00) published on the Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine @ Ubuweb

Category:1887 births Category:1968 deaths Category:People from Seine-Maritime Category:20th-century French writers Category:Artists from New York Category:Chess Olympiad competitors Category:Conceptual artists Category:Dada Category:French chess players Category:French chess writers Category:French experimental filmmakers Category:French immigrants to the United States Category:French mixed-media artists Category:French painters Category:French sculptors Category:Surrealist artists Category:Modern artists Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:'Pataphysicians Category:People from Greenwich Village, New York

greets John Cage (second from left) and Merce Cunningham at the 1972 Shiraz Arts Festival in Iran.]]

John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker, and amateur mycologist and mushroom collector. A pioneer of chance music, electronic music and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American 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 is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, the three movements of which are performed without a single note being played. The content of the composition is meant to be perceived as the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed, rather than merely as four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence, and the piece became one of the most controversial compositions of the twentieth century. Another famous creation of Cage's is the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by placing various objects in the strings), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces, the best known of which is Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48).

His 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 Eastern cultures. Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in 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 on changing events, 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 a way of waking up to the very life we're living".

Life

1912–31: Early years

Cage was born in Los Angeles, California. His father John Milton Cage Sr. (1886–1964) was an inventor, and his mother Lucretia ("Crete") Harvey (1885–1969) worked intermittently as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times. The family's roots were completely American: in a 1976 interview Cage mentioned "a John Cage who helped [George] Washington in the surveying of Virginia". Cage described his mother as a woman with "a sense of society" who 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, John Milton 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 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 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 was not thinking of composition. By 1928 Cage was convinced that he wanted to be a writer. That year he graduated from Los Angeles High School as a valedictorian and enrolled at Pomona College, Claremont. However, in 1930 he dropped out, believing that "college was of no use to a writer" by an incident described in the 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 the institution was not being run correctly. I left. 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 was not interested enough in architecture to dedicate his life to it. Cage started travelling, visited 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 formulae, but Cage was displeased with the results and left the finished pieces behind when he left. Cage's association with theatre 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."

1931–36: Apprenticeship

Cage returned to the United States in 1931.) and arts patron Galka Scheyer. 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 mentioned, however, 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. 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, however, and when he mentioned it, 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 USC and then at UCLA, as well as privately. particularly as an example of how to live one's life being a composer. 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 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 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."

1937–49: Modern dance and Eastern influences

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 UCLA. 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 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, with help from a fellow Cowell student Lou Harrison, Cage became a faculty member 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.

Like his personal life, Cage's artistic life went through a crisis in mid-1940s. The composer was experiencing a growing disillusionment with 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 the works of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy.

1950s: Discovering chance

Sonatas and Interludes were received well by the public. After a 1949 performance at Carnegie Hall 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, however, was Cage's chance encounter with Morton Feldman in New York City in early 1950. Both composers attended a New York Philharmonic Orchestra, where the orchestra performed Anton Webern's Symphony, op. 21, 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, and Cage's pupil Christian Wolff came to be referred to as "the New York school."

In early 1951 Wolff presented Cage with a copy of the I Ching—a Chinese classic text which describes a symbol system used to identify order in chance events. 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 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, 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 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 early 1960s, when he stopped performing and concentrated on composition. The I Ching became Cage's standard tool for composition: he used it in practically every work composed after 1951.

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 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, performances, etc. In 1952–53 he completed another mammoth project—the Williams Mix, a piece of tape music, which Earle Brown helped to put together. Also in 1952, Cage wrote down the piece that became his most well-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, 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, however: 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, was opposed to Cage's use of chance, and so were other composers who came to prominence during the 1950s, i.e. Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis.

From 1953 onwards, Cage was busy composing music for modern dance, particularly Cunningham's dances (Cage's partner adopted chance too, out of fascination for 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 Summer 1954 he moved out from New York and settled in a cooperative community in Stony Point, New York. The composer's financial situation gradually improved: in late 1954 he and Tudor were able to embark on a European tour. From 1956 to 1961 Cage taught classes in experimental composition at The New School, and during 1956–58 he also worked as an art director of a typography. Among the 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).

1960s: Fame

Cage was affiliated with Wesleyan University and collaborated with members of its Music Department from 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. One of the early fruits of Cage's association with the University was the publication, in October 1961, by the Wesleyan University Press of , a collection of Cage's lectures and writings on a wide variety of subjects, including some writings (e.g. the famous Lecture on Nothing) that were "composed", using a complex time length scheme, much like some of Cage's music was composed. Silence was the first book by Cage; he went on to publish five more. It was Silence, however, that remained his most widely read and influential book. But by mid-1960s Cage was receiving so many commissions and requests for appearances, that he was not able to fulfill them. This was accompanied by a busy touring schedule; Cage's compositional output from the decade is accordingly scanty. As set forth by Cage, happenings were theatrical events that abandoned 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 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 was to define 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 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, who in the course of his Etude for Piano cut off Cage's tie and then washed his co-performer’s hair with shampoo.

In 1967, Cage's A Year from Monday 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.

1969–87: New departures

at Shiraz Arts Festival 1971]] Cage's work from the sixties features some of his largest and most ambitious, not to mention socially utopian pieces, reflecting the mood of 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 a potted history of canonical classics, with fifty-two tapes of computer-generated sounds, 6,400 slides of designs many supplied by NASA, and shown from sixty-four slide projectors, with forty 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 the auditorium in the time for which they were there.

However, 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 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 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 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 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 (John Cage book) was first published by Wesleyan University Press in 1973. In January 1978 Cage 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.

1987–92: Final years and death

In 1987 Cage completed a piece called Two, for flute and piano, dedicated to performers Roberto Fabbriciani and Carlo Neri. The title referred to 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 pieces, usually employing a variant of the same technique; together, these works are known as Number Pieces. The process of composition, in many of the later Number Pieces, was simple selection of pitch range and pitches from that range, using chance procedures; One¹¹ (i.e. the eleventh piece for a single performer), completed in early 1992, was Cage's first and only foray into film. Another new direction, also taken in 1987, was opera: Cage produced five operas, all sharing the same title Europera, in 1987–91.

Already in the course of the eighties, Cage's health worsened progressively: he suffered not only from arthritis, but also from sciatica and arteriosclerosis. He suffered 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 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 suffered another stroke. He was taken to the nearest hospital, where he died on the morning of August 12. According to his wishes, Cage's body was cremated, and the ashes scattered in the Ramapo Mountains, near Stony Point, New York, the same place where Cage scattered the ashes of his parents, years before. Merce Cunningham outlived his partner by 17 years, and died peacefully in his home, of natural causes, on July 26, 2009.

Music

Early works, rhythmic structure, and new approaches to harmony

Cage's first completed pieces are currently lost. According to 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 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 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 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, 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 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.

Chance

involves obtaining a hexagram by random generation (such as tossing coins), then reading the chapter associated with that hexagram.]] Chart system 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, and the I Ching was used to determine the methods of sound production, or the rhythms, etc. 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: 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 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 the I Ching was far from simple randomization, however. 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: # Which of the seven modes, if we take as modes the seven scales beginning on white notes and remaining on white notes, which of those am I using? # Which of the twelve possible chromatic transpositions am I using? # For this phrase for which this transposition of this mode will apply, which note am I using of the seven to imitate the note that Satie wrote? 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 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 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 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 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. This concept of circus was to remain important to Cage throughout his life and featured strongly in such pieces as Roaratorio, an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake (1979), a many-tiered rendering in sound of both his text Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake, and traditional musical and field recordings made around Ireland. The piece was based on James Joyce's famous novel, Finnegans Wake, which was one of Cage's favorite books, and one from which he derived texts for several more of his works.

Improvisation

Since chance procedures were used by Cage to eliminate the composer's and the performer's likes and dislikes from music, Cage disliked the concept of improvisation, which is inevitably linked to the performer's preferences. However, in a number of works beginning in the 1970s, he found ways to incorporate improvisation. In Child of Tree (1975) and Branches (1976) the performers are asked to use certain species of plants as instruments, for example the cactus. The structure of the pieces is determined through the chance of their choices, as is the musical output; the performers had no knowledge of the instruments. In Inlets (1977) the performers play large water-filled conch shells - by carefully tipping the shell several times, it is possible to achieve a bubble forming inside, which produced sound. Yet, as it is impossible to predict when this would happen, the performers had to continue tipping the shells - as a result the performance was dictated by pure chance.

Visual art, writings, and other activities

Although Cage started painting in his youth, he gave it up in order to concentrate on music instead. His first mature visual project, Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel, dates from 1969. The work comprises two lithographs and a group of what Cage called plexigrams: silk screen printing on plexiglas panels. The panels and the lithographs all consist of bits and pieces of words in different typefaces, all governed by chance operations.

From 1978 to his death Cage worked at Crown Point Press, producing series of prints every year. The earliest project completed there was the etching Score Without Parts (1978), created from fully notated instructions, and based on various combinations of drawings by Henry David Thoreau. This was followed, the same year, by Seven Day Diary, which Cage drew with his eyes closed, but which conformed to a strict structure developed using chance operations. Finally, Thoreau's drawings informed the last works produced in 1978, Signals.

Between 1979 and 1982 Cage produced a number of large series of prints: Changes and Disappearances (1979–80), On the Surface (1980–82), and Déreau (1982). These were the last works in which he used engraving. In 1983 he started using various unconventional materials such as cotton batting, foam, etc., and then used stones and fire (Eninka, Variations, Ryoanji, etc.) to create his visual works. In 1988–1990 he produced watercolors at the Mountain Lake Workshop. The only film Cage produced was one of the Number Pieces, One¹¹, commissioned by composer and film director Henning Lohner who worked with Cage to produce and direct the 90-minute monochrome film. It was completed only weeks before his death in 1992. One¹¹ consists entirely of images of chance-determined play of electric light. It premiered in Cologne, Germany, on September 19, 1992, accompanied by the live performance of the orchestra piece 103.

Throughout his adult life, Cage was also active as lecturer and writer. Some of his lectures were included in several books he published, the first of which was (1961). Silence included not only simple lectures, but also texts executed in experimental layouts, and works such as Lecture on Nothing (1959), which were composed in rhythmic structures. Subsequent books also featured different types of content, from lectures on music to poetry—Cage's mesostics.

Cage was also an avid amateur mycologist: he co-founded the New York Mycological Society with four friends, Prominent critics of serialism, such as the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, were similarly hostile towards Cage: for Xenakis, the adoption of chance in music was "an abuse of language and [...] an abrogation of a composer's function."

An article by teacher and critic Michael Steinberg, Tradition and Responsibility, criticized avant-garde music in general:

The rise of music that is totally without social commitment also increases the separation between composer and public, and represents still another form of departure from tradition. The cynicism with which this particular departure seems to have been made is perfectly symbolized in John Cage's account of a public lecture he had given: "Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless of the question asked. This was a reflection of my engagement in Zen." While Mr. Cage's famous silent piece [i.e. 4′33″], or his Landscapes for a dozen radio receivers may be of little interest as music, they are of enormous importance historically as representing the complete abdication of the artist's power.

Cage's aesthetic position was criticized by, among others, prominent writer and critic Douglas Kahn. In his 1999 book Noise, Water, Meat Kahn acknowledged the influence Cage had on culture, but noted that "one of the central effects of Cage's battery of silencing techniques was a silencing of the social."

While much of Cage's work remains controversial, his influence on countless composers, artists, and writers is undeniable. After Cage introduced chance, Boulez, Stockhausen, and Xenakis remained critical, yet all adopted chance procedures in some of their works (although in a much more restricted manner); and Stockhausen's piano writing in his later Klavierstücke was influenced by Cage's Music of Changes and David Tudor. Other composers who adopted chance procedures in their works included Witold Lutosławski, Mauricio Kagel, and many others. Music in which some of the composition and/or performance is left to chance was labelled aleatoric music—a term popularized by Pierre Boulez. Helmut Lachenmann's work was influenced by Cage's work with extended techniques.

Cage's rhythmic structure experiments and his interest in sound influenced an even greater number of composers, starting at first with his close American associates Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff (and other American composers, such as La Monte Young), and then spreading to Europe. For example, almost all composers of the English experimental school acknowledge his influence: Michael Parsons, Christopher Hobbs, John White, Gavin Bryars, who studied under Cage briefly, and even Howard Skempton, a composer seemingly very different from Cage, and one whose work has been described as "the emancipation of consonance." Cage's influence is also evident in the Far East: one of Japan's most prominent classical composers of the 20th century, Tōru Takemitsu, was influenced by his music.

Cage's influence was also acknowledged by rock bands, such as Sonic Youth (who performed some of the Number Pieces) and Stereolab (who named a song after Cage), composer and rock and jazz guitarist Frank Zappa, and various noise music artists and bands: indeed, one writer traced the origin of noise music to 4′33″. The development of electronic music was also influenced by Cage: in the mid-1970s Brian Eno's label Obscure Records released works by Cage. Prepared piano, which Cage popularized, is featured heavily on Aphex Twin's 2001 album Drukqs. Cage's work as musicologist helped popularize Erik Satie's music, and his friendship with Abstract expressionist artists such as Robert Rauschenberg helped introduce his ideas into visual art. Cage's ideas also found their way into sound design: for example, Academy Award-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom cited Cage's work as a major influence.

==Archives==

The archive of the John Cage Trust is held at Bard College in upstate New York..

The John Cage Music Manuscript Collection held by the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts contains most of the composer's musical manuscripts, including sketches, worksheets, realizations, and unfinished works.

The John Cage Papers are held in Special Collections and Archives department of Wesleyan University's Olin Library in Middletown, Connecticut. They contain manuscripts, interviews, fan mail, and ephemera. Other material, including clippings, gallery and exhibition catalogs, a collection of Cage's books and serials, posters, objects, exhibition and literary announcement postcards, and brochures from conferences and other organizations

The John Cage Collection at Northwestern University in Illinois contains the composer's correspondence, ephemera, and the Notations collection.

Cultural references

The Tragically Hip recorded a song called "Tiger the Lion" for their Music @ Work album which refers to John Cage and some of his ideas. (see liner notes on album)

Sonic Youth on their SYR4 album perform two realizations of Cage's piece Six and one of Four⁸.

"John Cage Is Dead" is a track on Mickey Hart's Mystery Box album.

Who Put John Cage on the Guestlist? is the name of an album by Norwegian electronic research group Hemmelig Tempo.

"Jaune d'Oeuf en Cage" (Yolk in a Cage) is a track by David Fenech on his first album Grand Huit. It is a joke around the John Cage / Jaune Cage homophone in French.

In the musical Rent, Cage's name is mentioned during the song "La Vie Bohème" among other artists.

In December 2010, 18 years posthumously, Cage made his debut in the UK singles charts with "4' 33" (Cage Against the Machine Version)". The piece peaked at number 21 on the Christmas UK chart.

Footnotes

Notes

References

Books

Bernstein, David W., and Hatch, Christopher (ed.). 2001. Writings through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226044076

Boulez, Pierre, and Cage, John. 1995. The Boulez-Cage Correspondence. Edited by Robert Samuels and Jean-Jacques Nattiez, translated by Robert Samuels. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521485584

Brown, Kathan. 2001. John Cage Visual Art: To Sober and Quiet the Mind. Crown Point Press. ISBN 1891300164, ISBN 978-1891300165

Cage, John. 1973. Silence: Lectures and Writings, Wesleyan University Press Paperback (first edition 1961). ISBN 0-8195-6028-6

Fetterman, William. 1996. John Cage's Theatre Pieces: Notations and Performances. Routledge. ISBN 3718656434

Kostelanetz, Richard. 2003. Conversing with John Cage, Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93792-2

Nicholls, David (ed.). 2002. The Cambridge Companion to John Cage. Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0521789680

Nicholls, David. 2007. John Cage. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252032152

Patterson, David W. (ed.). John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933–1950. Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0815329954

Perloff, Marjorie, and Junkerman, Charles. 1994. John Cage: Composed in America. University of Chicago Press, 1994. ISBN 0226660575

Pritchett, James. 1993. The Music of John Cage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521565448

Revill, David. 1993. The Roaring Silence: John Cage – a Life. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1559702206, ISBN 978-1559702201

Encyclopedias

Taruskin, Richard. 2005. Oxford History of Western Music, The. Vol. 5. Oxford: Oxford UP, Inc. Indeterminacy pp. 55–101.

Dissertations and articles

Campana, Deborah. 1985. Form and Structure in the Music of John Cage. Dissertation, Northwestern University.

Curreri, Enrico. 2008. W: A Case Study in John-Cage-Centered Music Therapy. MA Thesis, New York University.

Emmerik, Paul van. 1996. Thema's en Variaties: Systematische Tendensen in de Compositietechnieken van John Cage. Dissertation, University of Amsterdam.

Haskins, Rob. 2004. "An Anarchic Society of Sounds": The Number Pieces of John Cage. Ph.D., Musicology, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.

External links

General information and catalogues

A Project by John Cage called ORGAN2/ASLSP is the longest concert ever created.

John Cage Database, includes a complete catalogue of Cage's music with details on individual compositions, as well as a discography, a bibliography and a list of forthcoming performances of Cage's work.

A John Cage Compendium, website by Cage scholar Paul van Emmerik, in collaboration with performer Herbert Henck and András Wilheim. Includes exhaustive catalogues and bibliography, chronology of Cage's life, etc.

Larry Solomon's John Cage Pages, a complete catalogue of Cage's music and a filmography, as well as other materials.

Silence: Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage

James Pritchett: Writings, articles on Cage's music in HTML and PDF form by Cage scholar James Pritchett.

Edition Peters: John Cage Biography and Works, Cage's principal publisher since 1961.

Guide to the John Cage Mycology Collection

Silence/Stories: related texts and poems by, among others, Lowell Cross, AP Crumlish, Karlheinz Essl, Raymond Federman, August Highland, George Koehler, Richard Kostelanetz, Ian S. Macdonald, Beat Streuli, Dan Waber, Sigi Waters and John Whiting

Link collections

John Cage Online

Specific topics

Beyst, Stefan. John Cage's Europeras: a light- and soundscape as musical manifesto, essay.

Bunger, Richard. The Well-Prepared Piano, Colorado College Music Press, 1973.

Kasper, Ulrike. "Sounds Visions, The Work of Jacques Pourcher, Perspectives on John Cage", essay on the exhibition "John Cage and Jacques Pourcher, Works on Paper", Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA.

The Music of Chance, article from the UK Guardian newspaper, quotes from various people who knew Cage.

ORGAN²/ASLSP: As Slow as Possible — John-Cage-Orgelprojekt Halberstadt, Web site about a current ongoing performance of one of the longest pieces of music ever written, lasting 639 years; see: As Slow As Possible.

The online music review La Folia has an in-depth article about 1951 and Cage’s Music of Changes

Listening

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 1

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 2

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 3

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 4

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 5

Media

John Cage at UbuWeb: historical, sound, film.

John Cage's etchings at the Crown Point Press website

Art of the States: John Cage, six works by the composer

Indeterminacy, Cage's short stories taken from various publications and accessed in random order.

FontanaMixer: computer program by Karlheinz Essl which generates a realtime version of John Cage's "Fontana Mix" (1958)

Other Minds Archive: John Cage interviewed by Jonathan Cott, streaming audio

Other Minds Archive: John Cage and David Tudor Concert at The San Francisco Museum of Art (January 16, 1965), streaming audio

Suite for Toy Piano (1948) performed by Margaret Leng Tan at the Other Minds Music Festival in 1999 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco.

1982 performance of Speech for 5 radios and reel (1955) on YouTube

Water Walk on YouTube from Cage's appearance on the game show I've Got a Secret in January 1960.

4′33″ and Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano performed by James Tenney at SASSAS sound, concert archive. Excerpts available on 'YouTube': 1, 2

John Cage, Aria performed by Elena Antonenko

The Anarchy of Silence. John Cage and Experimental Art (2009) a lecture by Julia E. Robinson on occasion of Cage's exhibition at the MACBA, Barcelona

Notes towards a re-reading of the “Roaratorio” the work of John Cage and his special relationship to radio at Ràdio Web MACBA

The Rest isn't Silence... it doesn't exist! Analytical material and recordings going back to the first rehearsal and performance of Imaginary Landscape No 4 in 1951.

Category:1912 births Category:1992 deaths Category:20th-century classical composers Category:American anarchists Category:American composers Category:American writers Category:Anarchist poets Category:Harvard University people Category:Anarchist musicians Category:Experimental composers Category:Fluxus Category:Guggenheim Fellows Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:LGBT composers Category:Opera composers Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:Western mystics Category:Black Mountain College faculty Category:Wesleyan University faculty Category:Contemporary classical music performers Category:American Zen Buddhists Category:American experimental musicians Category:Avant-garde pianists Category:Cornish College of the Arts faculty

Bgcolour	#6495ED
Name	Maya Deren
Caption	Maya Deren in Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
Birthname	Eleanora Derenkowsky
Birthdate	April 29, 1917
Birthplace	Kiev
Deathdate	October 13, 1961
Deathplace	New York City
Nationality	American
Field	Choreography, Film, Dancing, Ethnography, Ethnomusicology
Training	New York University, New School of Social Research, Smith College
Works	Films: "Meshes of the Afternoon" (1943), " At Land" (1944), "A Study for Choreography for Camera" (1945), "Ritual in Transfigured Time"(1945-1946), "Meditation on Violence" (1947), "The Very Eye of Night"(1959) Books: (1953) An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film (1946)
Influenced by	Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, Katherine Dunham, Alexander Hammid, Gregory Bateson, Teiji Itō
Influenced	Alexander Hammid, Barbara Hammer, Stan Brakhage, Jane Campion, Anaïs Nin
Awards	Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Work in Motion Pictures, 1947; Grand Prix Internationale for Amateur Film, Cannes Film Festival, 1947

Maya Deren (April 29, 1917, Kiev – October 13, 1961, New York City), born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, poet, writer and photographer.

Early life

Deren was born in Kiev, Ukraine to Solomon Derenkowsky and Marie Fiedler. It is said that she was named after Eleanora Duse, an Italian actress. In 1922 the family moved to Syracuse, New York. Her father shortened the family name to "Deren" shortly after they arrived in New York. He became the staff psychiatrist at the State Institute for the Feeble-Minded in Syracuse. In 1928, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Her mother moved to Paris to be with her daughter while she attended the League of Nations School in Geneva, Switzerland from 1930 to 1933.

College

Deren began college at Syracuse University, where she became active in the Trotskyist Young People's Socialist League. Through the YPSL she met Gregory Bardacke, whom she later married at the age of eighteen. After his graduation in 1935, she moved to New York City. She and her husband became active in various socialist causes in New York City. She graduated from New York University and separated from Bardacke. The divorce was finalized in 1939. She attended the New School for Social Research and received a master’s degree in English literature at Smith College. Her MA thesis was entitled "The Influence of the French Symbolist School on Anglo American Poetry" (1939). After graduation from Smith, Deren returned to New York’s Greenwich Village where she worked as an editorial assistant and free-lance photographer. In 1941, Deren wrote and suggested a children's book on dance to choreographer Katherine Dunham and later became her personal secretary. At the end of a tour, the Dunham dance company stopped in Los Angeles for several months to work in Hollywood. It was there that Deren met Alexandr Hackenschmied, a celebrated Czech-born photographer and cameraman who would become her second husband in 1942. Hackenschmied had fled Czechoslovakia after Hitler's advance.

Cinema

As a "forceful self promoter", Deren wrote articles and books, made avantgarde films, conducted "lecture study demonstrations", received a Guggenheim (1947) for creative work in motion pictures, and created a scholarship for experimental filmmakers, the Creative Film Foundation. Without these efforts postwar avantgarde film would have lost an inspirational voice.

In the early 1940s, Deren used some of the inheritance from her father to purchase a used 16 mm Bolex camera. She used this camera to make her first and best-known film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), in Los Angeles in collaboration with Hammid. Meshes of the Afternoon is recognized as a seminal American avant-garde film. Originally a silent film with no dialogue, music for the film was composed by Deren's third husband Teiji Itō in 1952.

In 1943, she adopted the name Maya Deren. Maya is the name of the mother of the historical Buddha as well as the dharmic concept of the illusory nature of reality. In Greek myth, Maia is the mother of Hermes and a goddess of mountains and fields. Also in 1943, Deren began making a film with Marcel Duchamp, The Witches' Cradle, which was never completed.

In 1944, back in New York City, her social circle included Duchamp, André Breton, John Cage, and Anaïs Nin.

Deren's second film was At Land, which she made in 1944. She made A Study in Choreography for the Camera in 1945. Ritual in Transfigured Time was made in 1946, which explored the fear of rejection and the freedom of expression in abandoning ritual.

In 1946 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for "Creative Work in the Field of Motion Pictures". In 1947 she won the Grand Prix Internationale for 16 mm experimental film at the Cannes Film Festival for Meshes of the Afternoon.

Deren's Meditation on Violence was made in 1948. Chao-Li Chi's performance obscures the distinction between violence and beauty. Halfway through the film, the sequence is rewound, producing a film loop.

In 1958, Deren collaborated with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School and Antony Tudor to create The Very Eye of Night.

Deren distributed her own films and promoted them through lectures and screenings in the United States, Canada, and Cuba. She lectured on film theory and Vodoun. She wrote, directed, edited, and performed in her own films.

Criticism of Hollywood

Throughout the 1940s and 50s, Deren attacked Hollywood for its artistic, political and economic monopoly over American cinema. She stated, “I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick,” and observed that Hollywood “has been a major obstacle to the definition and development of motion pictures as a creative fine-art form.” She set herself in opposition to the Hollywood film industry’s standards and practices.

Haiti and Vodoun

When Maya Deren decided to make an ethnographic film in Haiti, she was criticized for abandoning avantgarde film where she had carved her place, but she was ready to expand to a new level as an artist. The Guggenheim grant enabled Deren to finance travel to Haiti in 1947 and to complete her film "Meditation on Violence". She went on three additional trips through 1954 to document and record the rituals of vodoun. A source of inspiration for ritual dance was Katherine Dunham who wrote her master’s thesis on Haitian dances in 1939, which Deren edited. Afterwards Deren wrote several articles on religious possession in dancing before her first trip to Haiti. Deren not only filmed, recorded and photographed many hours of vodoun ritual, but also participated in the ceremonies. She documented her knowledge and experience of Vodoun in Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (New York: Vanguard Press, 1953), edited by Joseph Campbell, which is considered a definitive source on the subject.

Deren filmed 18,000 feet of Vodoun rituals and people she met in Haiti. The footage was incorporated into a posthumous documentary film edited and produced by Teiji Itō and his wife Cherel Winett Itō (1947–1999) in 1977. All of the original wire recordings, photographs and notes are held in the Maya Deren Collection at Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. The footage is housed at Anthology Film Archives, New York.

Death

Deren died in 1961, at the age of 44, from a brain hemorrhage brought on by extreme malnutrition. Her condition was also weakened by the amphetamines she had been taking since she began working for Dunham in 1941, prescribed by Dr. Max Jacobson. Deren was taking amphetamines and sleeping pills on a daily basis when she died. Her father suffered from high blood pressure, which she may have had as well.

Her ashes were scattered in Japan at Mount Fuji.

Legacy

Deren was a key figure in the creation of a New American Cinema, highlighting personal, experimental, underground film. In 1986, the American Film Institute created the Maya Deren Award to honor independent filmmakers.

Works about Deren and her works have been produced in various media:

In 1987, Jo Ann Kaplan directed a biographical documentary about Deren, titled Invocation: Maya Deren (65 min)

In 1994, the UK-based Horse and Bamboo Theatre created and toured Dance of White Darkness throughout Europe—the story of Deren's visits to Haiti.

In 2002, Martina Kudlacek directed a feature-length documentary about Deren, titled In the Mirror of Maya Deren (Im Spiegel der Maya Deren), which featured music by John Zorn.

Deren's films have also been shown with newly-written alternative soundtracks:

In 2004, the British rock group Subterraneans produced new soundtracks for six of Deren's short films as part of a commission from Queen's University Belfast's annual film festival. At Land won the festival prize for sound design.

In 2008, the Portuguese rock group Mão Morta produced new soundtracks for four of Deren's short films as part of a commission from Curtas Vila do Conde's annual film festival.

Filmography

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) with Alexander Hammid, music by Teiji Itō added 1952

At Land (1944) photographed by Hella Heyman and Alexander Hammid

A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) with Talley Beatty

Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) choreographic collaboration with Frank Westbrook and Rita Christiani, featuring Anaïs Nin and Gore Vidal

Meditation on Violence (1948) performance by Chao-Li Chi, Chinese flute and Haitian drums musical collage by Maya Deren with assistance by Teiji Itō.

The Very Eye of Night (1952–55) with Metropolitan Opera Ballet School and Antony Tudor, music by Teiji Itō

Unfinished

The Witches' Cradle (1943) with Marcel Duchamp and Pajorita Matta

Medusa (1949) With Jean Erdman

Haitian Film Footage (1947–55) edited and assembled by Teiji and Cherel Itō as (1981)

Season of Strangers (1959) also known as Haiku Film Project

Unreleased

Ensemble for Somnambulists (1951) Toronto Film Society workshop

Collaborations

The Private Life of a Cat (1947) co-directed by Alexander Hammid

See also

Women's Cinema

References

External links

Deren bibliography (via UC Berkeley)

Maya Deren - the DVD

In the Mirror of Maya Deren at IMDB

Martina Kudláček (director of "In the Mirror of Maya Deren") by Robert Gardner BOMB 81/Fall 2002

Maya Deren Forum

The-Artists.org listing

Private Life of a Cat (1947) at the Internet Archive

Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center">Maya Deren Collection at Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center

'Divine Horsemen' (book): excerpts

Category:1917 births Category:1961 deaths Category:Experimental filmmakers Category:American experimental filmmakers Category:American film directors Category:American Vodou practitioners Category:Female film directors Category:Film theorists Category:Guggenheim Fellows Category:People from Kiev Category:People from Syracuse, New York Category:American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Category:American Jews Category:Ukrainian Jews Category:American women writers Category:Jewish women writers Category:Ukrainian women writers Category:Vodou Category:Ukrainian immigrants to the United States

Name	Aphex Twin
Landscape	yes
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	Richard David James
Alias	AFX, Blue Calx, Bradley Strider, Caustic Window, DJ Smojphace, GAK, Martin Tressider, Polygon Window, Power-Pill, Prichard D. Jams, Q-Chastic, Tahnaiya Russell, The Dice Man, Soit P.P., The Tuss (speculated)
Born	August 18, 1971 Limerick, Ireland
Origin	Lanner, Cornwall, United Kingdom
Instrument	Synthesizer, electronics, laptop, Softsynth, drum machine, computer, sampler, piano
Genre	Electronic music
Occupation	Disc jockey, musician, composer, remixer
Years active	1985-present
Label	Rephlex, Warp, R&S;, Sire, Mighty Force, Rabbit City, Men
Associated acts	Universal Indicator, Mike & Rich

Richard David James (born 18 August 1971), best known under the pseudonym Aphex Twin, is an electronic musician described by The Guardian newspaper in 2001 as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music." He founded the record label Rephlex Records in 1991 with Grant Wilson-Claridge.

History

Early years

Richard David James was born to Welsh parents Lorna and Derek James in St. Munchin's Limerick Regional Maternity Hospital, Ireland. He grew up in Lanner, Cornwall, England; he enjoyed (along with two older sisters) a "very happy" childhood during which they, according to James, "were pretty much left to do what [they] wanted." He "liked growing up there, being cut off from the city and the rest of the world". James attended Redruth School, located in Redruth, Cornwall.

According to musician Benjamin Middleton, James started producing music at the age of 12. As a teenager he was a disc jockey at Shire Horse in St Ives, with Tom Middleton at the Bowgie Inn in Crantock, and also along the numerous beaches around Cornwall. James studied for a National Diploma in Engineering from 1988 to 1990 (aged 16 to 18) at Cornwall College. When talking about his studies, James has said that "music and electronics went hand in hand." James graduated from college; according to an engineering lecturer, however, he often had his headphones on during practical lessons, "no doubt thinking through the mixes he'd be working on later".

Early career: early 1990s

In 1989 James met and befriended Grant Wilson-Claridge when working as a DJ on alternate weeks at the Bowgie pub, near Newquay in Cornwall. Wilson-Claridge was intrigued by James's sets and was surprised to discover that James was playing tapes of his own music.

James' first release was the 12-inch EP Analogue Bubblebath on Mighty Force Records in 1991. It was first released under the moniker Aphex Twin, later changed to AFX. The track "En Trance to Exit" was made in collaboration with Tom Middleton, also known as Schizophrenia. The EP got on the playlist of Kiss FM, an influential London radio station, which helped the release to become a success.

In 1991, James and Wilson-Claridge founded Rephlex Records to promote "innovation in the dynamics of Acid — a much-loved and -misunderstood genre of house music forgotten by some and indeed new to others, especially in Britain."

Between 1991 and 1993, James released two Analogue Bubblebath EPs as AFX, and an EP under Bradley Strider, Bradley's Beat. James moved to London to take an electronics course at Kingston Polytechnic, but at the time admitted to David Toop that his "electronics studies were already slipping away as a career in the techno business took precedence." After quitting his course, James remained in London and released a number of albums and EPs on Warp Records and other labels under many aliases including AFX, Polygon Window, and Power-Pill. A number of James' tracks (released under the aliases Blue Calx, The Dice Man, and others) appeared on various compilations. Local legend has it that James lived on the roundabout in Elephant and Castle, South London during his early years in the capital - in fact he lived in a nearby disused bank.

Gaining success: 1992–1995

The first full-length Aphex Twin album, Selected Ambient Works 85–92, was released in 1992 on R&S; Records. It received high ratings and praise from critics. John Bush of Allmusic described it as a "watershed of ambient music". In 2002, Rolling Stone wrote of the album: "Aphex Twin expanded way beyond the ambient music of Brian Eno by fusing lush soundscapes with oceanic beats and bass lines." Pitchfork Media's review called it, "among the most interesting music ever created with a keyboard and a computer." Critics also noted that the songs were recorded on cassette and that the sound quality was "relatively poor".

In 1992, he also released the EPs Xylem Tube EP and Digeridoo (first played by DJ Colin Faver on London's Kiss FM) as Aphex Twin, as Power-Pill the Pac-Man EP based on the arcade game Pac-Man, and two of his four Caustic Window EPs. "Digeridoo" reached #55 in the UK Singles Chart, and was later described as foreshadowing drum and bass by Rolling Stone. "Digeridoo" was recorded initially for the benefit of FIZZ-BOMB (at the Shire Horse, St Ives, Cornwall). These early releases came out on Rephlex Records, Mighty Force of Exeter, and R&S; Records of Belgium.

In 1993, James released Analogue Bubblebath 3. He also released a single titled "On"; his second Bradley Strider EP, Bradley's Robot; two more Caustic Window EPs; and his first releases on Warp Records, Surfing on Sine Waves and "Quoth" under the alias Polygon Window.

Warp Records pressed and released a follow-up to Selected Ambient Works 85-92, Selected Ambient Works Volume II in 1994. The sound was much less beat and melody-driven than the previous volume. All of the track names were described with pie chart symbols, each of which was meant to be paired with a corresponding image in the album jacket, with exception for one song, which was named "Blue Calx". To decipher song titles, listeners had to compare the length of each track with the size of each pie chart symbol. For example, the first title, which is often labelled cliffs, is realised by pairing the first symbol with the first image, which is that of a rocky cliffside. James claimed in The Wire magazine and other media that these songs were inspired by lucid dreams and synaesthesia. Other releases are a fourth Analogue Bubblebath; GAK, derived from early demos sent to Warp Records; and Classics, a compilation album that includes "Digeridoo" and the Xylem Tube EP.

For his 1995 release, ...I Care Because You Do, James used an image of his face for the album cover, a motif that would continue on many of his later records. The album was a compilation of songs composed between 1990 and 1994 and represented a mish-mash of Aphex Twin's various music styles. This was James's last record of the 1990s to use mostly analogue synthesizers. He commissioned Western classical-music composer Philip Glass to create an orchestral version of one of the songs from this album, "Icct Hedral", which appeared on the Donkey Rhubarb EP.

Jungle, DSP, and laptops: 1995–1999

In 1995 (primarily with Hangable Auto Bulb, a near anagram of Analogue Bubblebath), James began releasing more material composed on computers, combining a jungle sound with nostalgic childhood themes and computer-generated acid lines.

James's early adoption of software synthesizers predated the later popularity of using computers to make music. In the mid-to-late 1990s, his music became more popular and mainstream, as he released Richard D. James Album and Expert Knob Twiddlers (a collaboration with fellow dance producer µ-ziq) in 1996, "Come to Daddy" in 1997 (#36 on UK charts) and "Windowlicker" in 1999 (#16 on UK charts). Two pop songs that heavily use Digital Signal Processing (DSP) techniques, "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker" were shown on MTV and became cover features for music magazines such as NME. The videos for both singles were directed by British artist Chris Cunningham and caused controversy on release because of their disturbing images and themes.

In 1998, Aphex Twin's track "[rhubarb]" (from Selected Ambient Works Volume II) appeared as part of the BBC's digital widescreen test transmission, which was on loop for many months as the service was introduced across the UK.

Prepared piano, laptops, and more DSP: 2000–2003

In 2001 Aphex Twin released drukqs, a two-CD album that featured computer controlled piano songs influenced by Erik Satie and John Cage. Many of the tracks' names are written in the Cornish language (e.g., 'jynweythek' translatable as 'machinemusic'). Also included were abrasive, fast, and meticulously programmed computer-made songs. Rolling Stone described the piano songs as "aimlessly pretty". Some reviewers concluded that drukqs was released as a contract breaker with Warp Records—a credible guess, as James's next big release was released on his own Rephlex label. James claimed to interviewers he had accidentally left an MP3 player labelled "Aphex Twin—unreleased tracks" on a plane, containing a large set of new songs, and rushed the album release to preempt an Internet leak. He also released a short EP titled 2 Remixes By AFX the same year as Drukqs. It featured two remixes, the originals being from 808 State and DJ Pierre. In addition, there is one untitled third track that consists of an SSTV image, which consists of mostly of high-pitched sounds, which can be decoded to a viewable image by proper software such as MultiMode (for Macintosh) or MMSSTV (for Windows).

Synthesizers and drum machines: 2004–2011

In late 2004, rumours of James's return to an acid techno-based sound were realised with the Analord series, an 11-part series of EPs with 42 total tracks, averaging 2–4 tracks per EP. The series was created by playing and sequencing analogue and digital electronic music equipment such as synthesizers and drum machines. The series was recorded on magnetic tape and then later pressed on vinyl.

James was meticulous about the whole process of recording, mastering, and pressing. James has said Rephlex Records was strict on quality control, trying out various pressing-plant companies until they felt it sounded perfect. To James's ears, vinyl or tape is better than digital, as no two copies are the same. However, label co-owner Grant Wilson-Claridge convinced James to release a CD compilation, Chosen Lords, which included 10 selected tracks from the Analord series. For the Analord series James used his collection of vintage synthesizer and drum machines, some of which were quite rare by that time. Some of the record inserts have pictures of rare synthesizers like the Synton Fenix, and the notoriously difficult-to-program Roland MC-4 sequencer (a sequencer with a reputation for excellent timing), as well as the legendary Roland TB-303.

Media reports indicate Aphex Twin is now recording under The Tuss. Rephlex Records has denied that Aphex Twin is The Tuss, but Aphex Twin fans and the media have ignored Rephlex's denial and The Tuss is treated as yet another Aphex Twin project.

In March 2009 Steve Beckett of Warp Records announced a new album for a possible release. As of November 2010, no new album was released, however, 20 more tracks were added to the Analord series in December 2009, only available through download from the Rephlex Records website.

In an October 2010 interview with British magazine Another Man, James stated that he had completed 6 albums, one of which was a remake of the unreleased Melodies from Mars, originally produced around the time of Richard D. James Album.

On November 16, 2010, Warp Records announced Aphex Twin, along with LFO, Moderat and others, will be headlining Bloc Weekend 2011 that will take place in Minehead, Somerset, UK, March 11-13. The same announcement included a video called "Seaside Specials video by Weirdcore with music taken from a recent Aphex DJ show".

Background details

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The Aphex Twin name

The name Aphex is derived from Aphex Systems Limited, a brand of audio signal processing equipment (itself derived from "analogue effects"). It is used with permission, as acknowledged on the back sleeves of Richard D. James Album and drukqs. He has explained in interviews that the Twin portion of his moniker is used in memory of his older brother, also named Richard James, who died at birth.

Artwork

James's own face, grinning or distorted in some way, is a common theme in his album covers, his music videos, and the songs themselves. The cover of I Care Because You Do features a painting of James, while the cover of Richard D. James Album presents a close-up photograph. His face is transplanted onto other peoples' bodies in the music videos of "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker". Near the end of the second track of the "Windowlicker" single (commonly referred to as "Equation"), a photo of James's face is embedded as a steganogram which is revealed when run through spectral analysis. Another embedded image of James, along with collaborator Tom Jenkinson, appears in the third track of 2 Remixes by AFX, "Bonus High Frequency Sounds", encoded in SSTV format, with text relating to the release.

James has used his own photography for some of his releases, such as the elaborate album sleeve for Selected Ambient Works Volume II.

Braindance

Richard's own Rephlex Records label, which he co-owns with Grant Wilson-Claridge, coined the term Braindance in 1991 to describe Aphex Twin's music. Rephlex Records' official definition of Aphex Twin and his followers' music is quoted as follows: "Braindance is the genre that encompasses the best elements of all genres, e.g traditional, classical, electronic music, popular, modern, industrial, ambient, hip-hop, electro, house, techno, breakbeat, hardcore, ragga, garage, drum and bass, etc."

Braindance applies to forward-thinking electronic music that can appeal to the mind as well as the desire to dance and party. Examples including Ed-DMX's Breakin' records label, µ-ziq's Planet-mu label, the Aphex Twin EP Come to Daddy and Astrobotnia Parts 1, 2 & 3.

Influences

At age 17, Richard D. James mentioned these influences: "Phonic Boy, Computer World, Mental Telepathy, Industrial Inc., Tomita, Tangerine Dream". Mixmaster Morris mentions on the "I Luv AFX" BBC Radio 1 Breezeblock session that James's preferred moniker while working as a DJ in Cornwall was Phonic Boy on Dope. More recently, he has said that he gets inspiration from "everyday sounds that can be emulated/reconstructed electronically, quality techno, especially from Europe, which overshadows the current hardcore pop crap." When asked about what is next for electronic music, he said "acid-techno, ambient-techno." Avant-garde music has been an influence on James, including artists such as Kraftwerk, Can, Tangerine Dream, Tod Dockstader, Xenakis, Piero Umiliani, Bernard Parmegiani, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, and the French composer Erik Satie for his piano works and his ideas for furniture music.

In acknowledgment of another influence, James released Music from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a compilation of music recorded by the pioneers of BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which included artists such as Delia Derbyshire, on his own label, Rephlex Records.

Many songs include sounds from and references to the ZX Spectrum. For instance, "Carn Marth" from Richard D. James Album includes the tape-loading noise of the game Sabre Wulf.

Intelligent Dance Music

The term 'intelligent dance music', or IDM, was coined in August 1993 by the (now defunct) IDM mailing list based at hyperreal.org, as a term to describe the sound pioneered by the Warp Records Artificial Intelligence Series. The series featured Aphex Twin tracks (under a different pseudonym), as well as early productions from labelmates such as Autechre and LFO. The usage of this term spread in the USA and on internet messageboards, but the term is still a source of controversy and derision amongst the artists and fans, including Aphex Twin.

When Rephlex staple and musical collaborator Mike (Mike & Rich) Paradinas was asked "'No one says IDM in England?" he answered: "'No, only on message boards when they're talking to Americans!" "No one uses or used it in UK. Only Americans ever used the term. It was invented by Alan Parry who set up the IDM mailing list'."

In the UK, Aphex Twin's music is normally referred to as electronic music due to Aphex Twin's influence coming from electronic musicians such as Parmegiani and his study of electronic engineering in technical college. The official genre name from Rephlex Records is Braindance. Aphex Twin refers to his own breakbeat tracks as breakbeat, jungle, or drum and bass interchangeably. Other genres that he indulges in include acid, ambient, ambient techno, noise, and many more. Rephlex artist Luke Vibert, when presented with the suggestion that he invented a genre called drill 'n bass, replied "What the fuck is drill n' bass?"

Influence on others

The London Sinfonietta has performed arrangements of Aphex Twin tracks. In 2005, the orchestra Alarm Will Sound released Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound Performs Aphex Twin. The album consists of acoustic arrangements of some of James's electronic tracks. Aphex Twin has said, "I don't really like rock & roll." Despite this, he has had an influence on rock bands like Radiohead. However, he has dismissed the idea of going on tour with them: "I wouldn't play with them since I don't like them." The animator David Firth has much of his work influenced and soundtracked by Aphex Twin.

Equipment

During an interview with Future Music, Richard said he likes using Ableton Live but prefers Liveslice for beat editing/stretching. Asked what equipment did use, he responded "Raveolution 309, the Raven Max, MC-909 limited edition, Quasimidi Van Helden, MAM Freebass 383, Roland DJ-70, E-15, SP-808, Akai S3200, Behringer MX602A and all the Behringer effects that copy other things."

In an interview with Japan's Snoozer magazine in 2001, James stated that his favorite instruments were his piano, laptop computer, and the Synton Fenix.

In one of his older interviews in the nineties, Richard said he used Pro Tools and "stuff like that", though he is known to have used Cubase around the time of the "Richard D James" album. In the same interview, he reveals that he has "homemade" equipment which covered software programs written by himself and synthesisers and various hardware devices he built when he was younger.

Richard D. James studied electronics in Cornwall College and Kingston Polytechnic in London. He built his own synthesizers and samplers in his early years, he has also modified and circuit bent his equipment. James also programmed his personal music software algorithm.

Aphex Twin's press

James described himself in The Guardian as follows: "I'm just some irritating, lying, ginger kid from Cornwall who should have been locked up in some youth detention centre. I just managed to escape and blag it into music."

He lives in southeast London in a converted bank, which was formerly the Bank of Cyprus and then HSBC. Contrary to popular opinion, however, he does not own the silver structure in the centre of the roundabout at Elephant and Castle. This is, in fact, the Michael Faraday Memorial, containing a power transformer for the Northern Line, which James jokingly claimed to be buying in an interview with The Face magazine in 2001.

Stockhausen vs. The Technocrats

In November 1995, The Wire published an article titled "Advice to Clever Children". In the process of producing the interview, a package of tapes containing music from several artists, including Aphex Twin, was sent to Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Stockhausen commented:

Aphex Twin responded: "I thought he should listen to a couple of tracks of mine: "Digeridoo", then he'd stop making abstract, random patterns you can't dance to".

ZX81 competition

Richard claims to have produced sound on a Sinclair ZX81 (a machine with no sound hardware) at the age of 11:

When I was 11, I won 50 pounds in a competition for writing this program that made sound on a ZX81. You couldn't make sound on a ZX81, but I played around with machine code and found some codes that retuned the TV signal so that it made this really weird noise when you turned the volume up.

By displaying patterns that induced excessive sidebands in the video signal, the lower sideband was forced to spill over into the audio portion of the TV signal's spectrum. While the ZX81 was designed to filter the lower sideband of the video signal out, its simple circuitry did not remove all of it, and James' software was supposedly able to overcome the filtering.

Discography

:''See Richard D. James discography

References

External links

Aphex Twin discography at Discogs.

Aphex Twin discography at xltronic.com.

Aphex Twin discography at The Aphex Twin Community.

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Category:1971 births Category:Ambient musicians Category:Braindance musicians Category:British electronic musicians Category:British experimental musicians Category:British techno musicians Category:English people of Welsh descent Category:Intelligent dance music musicians Category:Living people Category:People from Cornwall Category:People from County Limerick Category:Sire Records artists Category:Remixers Category:Warp Records artists Category:People with synesthesia