A scene from the latest production of Cage's 1982 radio play commissioned by West German Radio (WDR)

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In a couple of months, we will be attending a production of James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphebet by John Cage at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College (keep an eye out for a forthcoming review, or join us at the event on Friday November 11!). But in the meantime, while we are eagerly anticipating the opening, we’d like to offer you a snippet from describing a dictionary based on photography.  Cage quotes from Duchamp’s A l’nfinitif (The White Box), 1967:

With films, taken close up, of parts of very large objects, obtain photographic records which no longer look like photographs of something. With these semi-microscopics constitute a dictionary of which each film would be the representation of a group of words in a sentence or separated so that this film would assume a new significance or rather after the concentration on this film of the sentences or words chosen would give a form of meaning to this film and that, once learned, this relation between film and meaning translated into words would be “striking” and would serve as a basis for a kind of writing which no longer has an alphabet or words but signs (films) already freed from the “baby talk” of all ordinary languages. — Find a means of filing all these films in such order that one could refer to them as in a dictionary.”

For more information about the radio play turned performance piece see the Richard B. Fisher Center website here.

Marcel Duchamp's, The Creative Act, released by Sub Rosa in 2007

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It's all in the title. For those who would like to listen to Duchamp read The Creative Act or by interviewed by the recently deceased Richard Hamilton, Duchamp's 2007 CD, The Creative Act, is now available for streaming on Rhapsody.com. Of course, it's only free for a seven day trial, but we recommend you use those seven days those seven days up by listening to that one CD over and over again. You won't regret it.

Click here for link:

A wall inside Large Glass, London

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It's in London and it's called Large Glass. What could it be? Turns out, it' a freshly minted "gallop" shop. And a "gallop" shop turns out to be a gallery that also functions as a store, a gallery-shop that offers both a faster pace and objects for sale right beside the art that hangs on the intimate and familiarly museum-white walls. As of July 8th, Large Glass is displaying art, objects, and books by artists such as Alvar Aalto, Jeff McMillan, and Bernard Schobinger.

It is surely worth a visit at 392 Caledonian Road, as its name suggests: it was taken directly from Marcel Duchamp's infamous Large Glass / The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even. And if the two share anything in common, we will be sure to drop by to at least one of the many exciting events offered behind their own glass storefront.

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Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas recently joined 99 hyped titles such as Freakonomics, Omnivore's Dilemma, Dreams from My Father, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Fast Food Nation in Time Magazine's new list of 100 Best Nonfiction Books. Many of these titles have graced the Buy 2 Get 1 Free or Summer Reading aisles at Borders, several have been made into documentary films, and many authors have appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or AC 360. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, on the other hand, is hardly nonfiction. Stein wrote from the perspective of her partner in her usual conversational yet staccato jumble, and the events in Stein's life are largely exaggerated and oftentimes fabricated. Hemingway called it a "damned pitiful book," Matisse was outraged by her portrayal of his wife, and Braque thought Stein misconstrued Cubism. But then, was there really any other way for Stein to write a genuine autobiography without employing inventive avant-garde stylistics and causing a stir? Here's what Time had to say:

"Writing her lover's 'autobiography' proved a witty way for American author Gertrude Stein to detail her own life as Parisian writer, salon host and arts patron. Ostensibly, readers can take in the book, published in 1933, as Stein writing about Alice B. Toklas (which is what the title suggests) or as Toklas 'writing' about Stein (which is what the book actually is). Either way, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was groundbreaking in its experimentation with form: an autobiography written by another person. Many modernist masters make an appearance in Stein's tome — among them Picasso, Hemingway and Matisse — and their influence on Stein is recounted through vivid anecdotes. For example, Stein's first major publication, Three Lives, was written under the "stimulus" of a Cézanne painting. Although it became the author's best-selling book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was mainly notable for its easier-to-read narrative style (a departure from Stein's favored monologue form), making it a sort of Stein for Beginners."

Master of the Canon

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 "now marjorie [perloff] was giving a talk based on the
 last chapter of her most recent book      the poetics of
indeterminacy      the last chapter of which happens to deal
 with john cage and with me
                                     and whatever differences there may
  be between cage and me      and these are considerable      we
 were both obliterated by the righteous wrath of harold bloom
    who had hardly heard more than our names      when he
 denounced the proceedings as ridiculous and us as nonpoets
and stormed off the stage"

David Antin, from What It Means to Be Avant-Garde