John Cage. Rolywholyover. A Circus. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Menil Colection, Houston; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Art Tower Mito Contemporary Art Center, Mito; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 12.9.1993-11.6.1995.

Cage, John

About this Item

New York; Rizzoli & Los Angeles; The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1993. Printed metal box 25,5x29,5 cm, containing numerous printed objects. There are a few light scrape marks on the box. A fine copy. Published on the occasion of the exhibition of one of the last projects that Cage were working on prior to his death in 1992. The box contains a selection of works by many artists important to Cage, such as Anne d'Harnoncourt, Julie Lazar, Laura Kuhn, Joan Retallack, Mark Swed, Marshall McLuhan, Andrew Weil, Ellsworth Snyder and D. T. Suzuki, interactive computer installations and relevant ephemera subject to the manipulations of a chance-generated score, and a program of live and pre-recorded performances, film and video screenings and readings. "Prior to Rolywholyover, Cage experimented with the museum as medium in several smaller exhibitions, including a room-size sound and light environment Writing Through the Essay, ?On the Duty of Civil Disobedience? (1985/91), commissioned for documenta 8, Kassel (1987), which involved periodically changing display elements. This changing display was further developed with the addition of works by invited artists in Changing Installation at the Mattress factory for the Carnegie International, Philadelphia (1991). And the exhibition Kunst als Grenzbeschreitung: John Cage und die Moderne at the Neue Pinakothek Munich (1991) introduced objects borrowed from other museums in the region and displayed them ahistorically according to chance operations. Rolywholyover comprised these previously tested modes of chance-generated composition in the four 'movements' of the composition: [1] 'Museumcircle', comprised of decontextualized objects loaned by local museums; 'Circus', a changing display of works by artists of the Cage circle; 'Cage Gallery', dedicated to his visual art works; and 'Media space', dedicated to media and performance works." (Sandra Skurvida, from "The Artist as Curator", in Mousse #42).

Seller Inventory # 47258

Bibliographic Details

• Title: John Cage. Rolywholyover. A Circus. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Menil Colection, Houston; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Art Tower Mito Contemporary Art Center, Mito; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 12.9.1993-11.6.1995.
• Seller catalogs:
  • Art/Konst