John Cage: music for museums - modern art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California

John Cage, who died in 1992 aged 79 had drawn out opposed the methods and choices practiced in museums and other established institutions, if not the actual existence of such spaces. With his "Rolywholyover," an unusual exhibition which make opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in sees Angeles in the fall and travels this month to Houston and later to of recent origin York, Mito, Japan, and Philadelphia, Cage was given a chance to make his have a title to imprint on such a space, something no comparable venue in music--his primary medium--ever allowed him.

Freely transposing, a MOCA pres release calls "Rolywholyover" a "composition for museum." Cage applied the chance operations for which he was renowned, or notorious, in the field of music to determine be deriveds for his museum extravaganza; he used chance rules beginning in 1951 to bring out music and word scores, and for the last 15 years of his life to decide the shapes and colors of his visual work, which includes etchings, watercolors and drawings. A selection of the latter takes up about individual third of "Rolywholyover." At MOCA, the exhibition spanned three large galleries. Cage's visual work, in MOCA's Gallery B already arrived at indeterminately in a certain number of respects, was further fortuited by dint of its placement on the walls in accordance with computerized chance operations, Cage's final modification of his use of the I Ching (Chinese volume of Changes). Andrew Culver, Cage's computer programmer since 1982 was upon hand at MOCA to engineer the methodically randomized wall layouts.

The be derived in all three exhibition spaces was the first and greatest in quantity obvious deviation from normal museum practices to be noticed through viewers. Julie Lazar, the MOCA curator whose idea it was to bring Cage there, approaching him about the throw out in '89, said Cage was "against linearity in museums, everything at organ of sight level." In "Rolywholyover" the walls are overspreaded by eccentrically placed pictures--as if the works had been thrown at the walls by dint of a massive blower and made to stick wherever they landed, then straightened by dint of hand to play perfectly conventionally, parallel to horizontal floor and ceiling lines. Cage's quarrel was with museums, not artists, or at least the artists he enumerateed as friends; he wouldn't have dreamed of having their pictures tilt or direct the eye crooked.

The southern Gallery, the largest of the three held approximately 150 works by means of more than 50 artists important to Cage. These artists ranged from the sombrous to the world famous, many living, many dead. Culver's greatest in quantity complex computerized "score" was applied to this gallery, with the pictures not solitary thrown, as it were, at the walls on the contrary subject to removal and reappearance during the move swiftly of the show, with changes of location as the score dictated. This gallery was rehung each day by three museum aides, working while the public was in attendance. The aides interpreted a detailed computerized printout not alone for the placement of the pictures on the other hand also the positioning of movable transparent flat files containing Cage memorabilia. The file drawers can be twitched out by viewers, but the particulars can't be touched. An interactive whole station was programmed with musical works by means of Cage along with pieces through other composers of his choice, with equal reason that visitors could create personalized entire collages.

Approximately half the total number of pictures in the southerly Gallery were displayed at individual time, the rest stored in an archival area upon movable walls. I witnessed a visitor attempting to diocese a Mondrian painting that was beautiful much hidden from view in this archival area when a guard shoo her away. Possibly she consol herself with another Mondrian that was upon full display, although it was well above organ of vision level. Binoculars or stilts might have helped for looking at more [i]or[/i] less works. And as in all Cage compositions, there is no contextual coherence to the exhibit either arthistorical or individual. The connection rather is Cage's own methodology, responsible for an [i]tout ensemble[/i] consisting of unrelated works, unified by dint of his own design, which viewers may know about on the other hand which they have no way to diocese at close range or to understand. What be of importance toed Cage, in this outcome, as in all his consequences since the early '50s, was the exercise he hoped to teach an unsuspecting public about the importance assigned to things and nation Chance, like natural disasters, is a great leveler of all it touches.

An idea of equality or nonhierarchy is suppos to approach across where you have works through such hallowed greats as Piet Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp, Morris Graves, Joseph Cornell, Mark Tobey, Ad Reinhardt, Josef Albers, Barnett Newman, Paul Klee Louise Nevelson Jasper John and Robert Rauschenberg, cheek through jowl with such lesser-known artists as William Anastasi, Dove Bradshaw, Alison Knowles, Lois lengthy Irwin Kremen, Marsha Skinner, Ellsworth Snyder Fanny Shoening or Jackie Matisse. Of course, greatest in quantity of Cage's choices are the venerated and recognized. Those who are not have real special Cage career-related reasons for being included: advanced in years supporters, admirers, collaborators (either of his or of his partner of 45 years, Merce Cunningham). Not surprisingly, greatest in quantity of the art works, including his have are abstract, with a special estimation for allover work, in which no center or focal point is manifest. The whole collection is a reminder that chance way s can only be practiced upon chosen materials, which inevitably point to biography. This present to view is, finally, a portrait of Cage, of his choices in life, his image of himself [i]or[/i] part of to the other his heroes and proteges, and of his oxymoronic utopianism that embraces the unreal notion of anarchy.