CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/15/2020

Need a little wit & daring in your so-called life? Here are four weekend activities that will liberate your spirit & open your mind

If you're like us, the time has come–if only for the safe space of the weekend–to GET LOOSE. Yes, we're still cooking at home. But that doesn't mean we can't use a facsimile of Dorothy Iannone's emotionally and sexually charged 1969 recipe book as our guide. And yes, many of us have been journaling conscientiously… keeping lists and tracking time. But this weekend, we're challenging ourselves to go further, taking inspiration from Eva Hesse's searching and searingly honest diaries, as well as the impassioned early love letters of John Cage to Merce Cunningham. Finally, we're breaking free of the stranglehold of "good" musical taste with this gleefully wrong playlist from the editors of The World's Worst: A Guide to the Portsmouth Sinfonia. (See the editors' absolutely essential playlist notes here!)

WHET YOUR APPETITE
May is National Salad Month, people! Celebrate with confessions, erotic asides and a recipe from Dorothy Iannone's naughty, handwritten 1969 Cookbook, available by special order at bookshw-la@artbook.com.

CUCUMBER SALAD
4 Cucumbers peeled & thinly sliced
3 Tbsp Cider vinegar
2 Tbsp Sour cream
1/4 Cup Yoghurt
1/2 Tsp Salt
1 Tbsp Chopped dill

INSTRUCTIONS
Soak cucumbers in ice water 30 minutes. DRAIN.
Mix together vinegar, sour cream, yoghurt and salt.
Pour over cucumbers.
Mix well.
Chill 30 minutes.

NOTES FROM THE PAGE
"Whenever you see something in your wine glass it helps to be able to say right away, it's the cork. // Have I stumbled on the secret of the little clouds—desperation plus drink plus (super) duperness? // I just heard that Beuys has bought a Rolls Royce… Turned out to be a Bentley."

Dorothy Iannone: A Cookbook, published by JRP|Ringier, is available by special order from Artbook @ Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles Bookstore. Email bookshw-la@artbook.com to order.

---

SNOOP
Luxuriate in the intimate, uncensored diaries of someone else!

"I see things only in extreme positions," Eva Hesse wrote in the last entry of her diaries, penned shortly before her death in 1970. "Love, hate. so strong rich poor. I can almost see myself in a commune, I feel such a closeness to friends to good to beauty hope love. And cannot accept the evil unjustness in things. But extreme. not naive, not. I don’t have that. I have been there, really. Into that. description sounds unreal or too real. be straight. How to give this up straight. If only I could write. However if honesty can break through the real truth it will read. reality must get through."

Born to Jewish parents in 1936, Eva Hesse fled Nazi Germany with her older sister at the age of two and eventually reunited with her family in New York City a year later. In 1959 she received her BA from Yale University, and within a few years began creating the sculptures that would put her at the forefront of the postminimalist movement. In October 1969 she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and she died one year later, at the age of 34, after three failed operations. This beautifully-designed, 904-page volume collects her revelatory diary entries, 1955 to 1970. It's an artworld page-turner, we promise.

Eva Hesse: Diaries is published by Hauser & Wirth Publishers.

---

BARE ALL
What do you have to lose? Write a letter to the love of your life.
And send it!

During this pandemic, we've spent countless hours on Zoom, social media, email… So much gets said, and yet so little. This weekend, we are taking inspiration from John Cage's passionate, distraught and affectionate letters to Merce Cunningham at the heady inception of their relationship in the early 1940s. It's a massive relief to read the real thing. You'll see when you write your own.

Above, Cage writes, "That it would ever end, I never suspected, or could have believed. Your hating me is enough, I suppose. god knows what I will do with that and those feelings of love, No room is small enough for me to lie in…" Another 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."

Love, Icebox: Letters from John Cage to Merce Cunningham is published by The John Cage Trust.

---

BUTCHER THE CLASSICS
Turn on, tune in and join your own voice to this mind-boggling playlist from the editors of The World's Worst: A Guide to the Portsmouth Sinfonia. Anyone can do it!

In 1970, galvanized in part by the musical experiments of avant-garde composers Gavin Bryars, John Cage and Cornelius Cardew, students at Portsmouth College of Art in England formed their own symphony orchestra. Christened the Portsmouth Sinfonia, its primary requirement for membership was that all players, regardless of skill, experience or musicianship, be unfamiliar with their chosen instruments. Click here to listen to the complete playlist. And be sure to click through to our website to read editors Chris Reeves and Aaron Walker's playlist notes. They can only enhance the listening experience…

The World's Worst: A Guide to the Portsmouth Sinfonia is published by Soberscove Press.

---