Four Events that Have Led to Large Discoveries (About Merce Cunningham)
"What was it about Cunningham that made him stand out so," asks art historian Douglas Crimp in his catalogue essay for the 2017 exhibition Merce Cunningham: Common Time. "The dance movement he made—whatever its diverse sources in ballet and modern technique, observation of people in the streets and animals in nature, chance operations, pure invention—was uniquely suited to his own body, and he was its finest exponent." Joining in a worldwide celebration of choreographer/dancer Merce Cunningham's birth—born on this day in 1919—we share Crimp's essay online for the first time as a testament to Cunningham's influence, innovation, and iconoclasm.
Il Treno di John Cage: In Italy, a Historic “Happening on Wheels”
"A 'prepared' train, as envisaged by John Cage, would be a large-scale equivalent of Cage’s 'prepared piano,' but one in motion." In a posthumously published writing, former Walker director Martin Friedman recalls Il Treno di John Cage (1978), a three-day musical train ride across Italy.
“It’s Art If I Say So”: Martin Friedman on Marcel Duchamp’s 1965 Visit to Minneapolis
"My first question was, did he feel that the revolutionary spirit that had inspired Dada and other early twentieth-century Modernist movements was still alive?" Martin Friedman recalls a 1965 meeting with Marcel Duchamp in Minneapolis.
