John Cage & The Large Glass
Moira Roth & William Roth, “John Cage on Marcel Duchamp”
Looking at the Large Glass, the thing that I like so much is that I can focus my attention wherever I wish. It helps me to blur the distinction between art and life and produces a kind of silence in the work itself. There is nothing in it that requires me to look in one place or another or, in fact requires me to look at all. I can look through it to the world beyond
Art in America 61 (Nov, Dec, 1973)
I’d love to dissect this quote to understand how would John Cage comment on a art piece the Large Glass.
Looking at the Large Glass, the thing that I like so much is that I can focus my attention wherever I wish.
This sentence above is the argument that he brings to the passage. It limits the interpretation towards his subjective experience. He emphasize on what he likes, what he prefer to do, and the liberty of an individual within experiencing the art piece itself. He uses his eyes as a visual sensory. Using the word ‘Focus’ to help and guide the reader that there is no limitation in one’s perceptive manner. Do whatever you like, that’s what I feel like John Cage is saying here.
It helps me to blur the distinction between art and life and produces a kind of silence in the work itself.
What does it means to blur the distinction between art and life? As if they’re both a different thing. This statement feels like evoking such questions within me. Cage wanted to bring me to live his experience. Looking that art and life are two separate things that somewhat living the same experience. Two sides of the same coin.
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What silence is he talking about? the way he uses his perception freely made art and life somewhat blurry and it also produces a silence within the work? What does that mean? Again, I feel like Cage is trying to evoke the thought of the readers by saying all these non-sensical experience. Which is working on me. Because art is never silence. Art is loud, it always is. Even if it speak softly, it always comes across hard. So to find a silence within an art, is in someway pushing the senses to look more than what was being presented. To dive deeper and figure out a different meaning that what was seen.
There is nothing in it that requires me to look in one place or another or, in fact requires me to look at all. I can look through it to the world beyond
Cage emphasize towards this freedom of perception as a way to reach his own ‘zen’. His own ‘enlightenment’. A liberated way to use your senses to see what you want to see and in his word to not see at all, helps him to see a world he didn’t see before. A configuration of methodology in order to make sense of a world that is non-sensical. Where the only way to achieve it is by not conforming to what the piece is telling you to do. But to do whatever you wanted to do to reach a world you never had reached before.
To sum this up, John Cage’s comment on Marcel Duchamp’s the Large Glass feels like a statement of non conformity. He uses his subjective experience while looking at the Large Glass and guide us to break through the norm. Stating odd comments that somehow evoked certain questions. Questions that would never be asked if we were to conform. Questions that pushes us to experience life with a different perspective, even maybe in a peculiar way. So that we may look through the world that was hidden.
Was watching about John Cage’s 4:33 piece by Listening In in Youtube. Came across his comment. Feels eager to dissect it, as it was beautifully put. Find it here.
