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PUBLISHER
The John Cage Trust

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6.75 x 9.5 in. / 144 pgs / 96 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2019 p. 59   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781942884385 TRADE
List Price: $24.95 CDN $34.95 GBP £22.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

TERRITORY
WORLD

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THE JOHN CAGE TRUST

Love, Icebox

Letters from John Cage to Merce Cunningham

Edited with text by Laura Kuhn. Photography by Emily Martin.

Love, Icebox

Cage’s passionate, distraught and affectionate letters to Cunningham provide a vivid portrait of the start of their life together

A New York Times critics' pick | Best Art Books 2019

These early letters from John Cage to Merce Cunningham will be revelatory, for while the two are widely known as a dynamic, collaborative duo, the story of how and when they came together has never been fully revealed. In the 39 letters of this collection, spanning 1942–46, Cage shows himself to be a man falling deeply in love. When they first met at the Cornish School in Seattle in the 1930s, Cage was 26 to Cunningham’s 19. Their relationship was purely that of teacher and student, and Cage was also very much married.

It was in Chicago that their romantic relationship would begin. Cage was teaching at Moholy-Nagy’s School of Design when Cunningham passed through town as a dancer with the Martha Graham Company, appearing on stage on March 14, 1942. Cage’s letters, which begin in earnest a week later, are increasingly passionate, distraught, romantic and confused, and occasionally contain snippets of poetry and song. They are also more than love letters, as we see intimations that resonate with our experience of the later John Cage.

Love, Icebox takes its shape from these letters—transcribed, chronologically ordered, and in some instances reproduced in facsimile. Laura Kuhn, Cage’s assistant from 1986 to 1992 and now longtime director of the John Cage Trust, adds a foreword, afterword and running commentary. Photographic illustrations of their final 18th Street loft in New York City, as well as personal and household objects left behind, remind us of the substance and rituals of their long-shared life.


Featured image is reproduced from 'Love, Icebox.'

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Shelf Awareness

Dave Wheeler

To see how Cage's brilliant mind transposed disparate elements around him into an ongoing legacy inspires me to keep returning to his challenging, nonlinear work.

New York Times: Book Review

Henry Alford

John Cage’s onetime assistant and now the director of the John Cage Trust — collects a series of 39 letters that the composer wrote to the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham during the 1940s. What’s lovely about this slim volume is how it traces the full arc of a relationship.

New York Times

Holland Cotter

Preserved by Cunningham and discovered after his death in 2009, [the letters] constitute the foundation stones of one of the great Modernist love affairs, one that began as a teacher-student crush (Cage was the teacher) and blossomed into an artistic collaboration and 50-year marriage. We only get Cage’s view of the affair in the letters, but the emotions expressed are intense enough to speak for two...

New Republic

Rumaan Alam

An intimate look inside the long-standing romantic and creative collaboration between two of the titans of the Modernist avant-garde: Merce, the fierce dancer, and John, the cerebral composer.

Full Stop

Blair Johnson

Love, Icebox: Letters from John Cage to Merce Cunningham lets us into one side of the storied 20th-century partnership between the composer and dancer/choreographer. As a collection of beautifully presented photographs and transcripts, the book expresses the foundation of the couple’s relationship, the development of Cage’s creative life, and the inevitable merging of the two.

Los Angeles Review of Books

Perwana Nazif

Love, Icebox is extremely gratifying and nearly guiltily so. A book of letters dated between 1942 to 1946 from John Cage to Merce Cunningham, Love, Icebox illustrates at least one perspective on the beginning and formation of Cage and Cunningham’s relationship.

Rain Taxi Review of Books

Richard Kostelanetz

Illuminating; hopefully we can expect the John Cage Trust to produce more fresh books, each as surprising and valuable as this.

Love, Icebox

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FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/14/2022

Each page a Valentine in 'Love, Icebox: Letters from John Cage to Merce Cunningham'

Each page a Valentine in 'Love, Icebox: Letters from John Cage to Merce Cunningham'

A book so beautiful, so direct and simple, but also so raw, is rare. Love, Icebox: Letters from John Cage to Merce Cunningham is an historic document, as well as a guilty pleasure. Published by the John Cage Trust, with Foreword, Commentary and Afterword by its longtime director and former assistant to Cage, Laura Kuhn, this book is filled with emotional, euphoric, devastated and unguarded love letters from the pioneering composer to his muse and partner, the equally game-changing choreographer. In addition to the letters and Kuhn's invaluable commentary, the book is filled with photographs of the couple's 18th Street loft and objects from their lives–from cookbooks to board games, toys to ornaments, instruments and timepieces. This particular letter, postmarked July 22, 1944, ends with the wistful query, "pardon the intrusion: but when in september will you be back? i would like to measure my breath in relation to the air between us." continue to blog


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John Cage: A Mycological Foray

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USD $60.00
| CAN $75 UK £ 47

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ISBN: 9781942884385
USD $24.95
| CAN $34.95 UK £ 22

Pub Date: 8/20/2019
Active | In stock


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ISBN: 9781938221217
USD $24.00
| CAN $31 UK £ 21

Pub Date: 10/21/2019
Active | In stock


John Cage: 4'33''– Sounds Like Silence

JOHN CAGE: 4'33''– SOUNDS LIKE SILENCE

Spector Books

ISBN: 9783940064417
USD $40.00
| CAN $54

Pub Date: 6/26/2018
Active | In stock


John Cage / Milan Grygar: Chance Operations & Intention

JOHN CAGE / MILAN GRYGAR: CHANCE OPERATIONS & INTENTION

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ISBN: 9783735601551
USD $47.50
| CAN $65

Pub Date: 3/22/2016
Active | Out of stock


Composition in Retrospect

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Exact Change

ISBN: 9781878972118
USD $15.95
| CAN $22.5 UK £ 13.99

Pub Date: 10/1/2008
Active | Out of stock