ARTIST MONOGRAPHS

John Cage

Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays


           

ACTIVE BACKLIST

John Cage: A Mycological Foray

ATELIER ÉDITIONS
Edited by Ananda Pellerin. Text by Kingston Trinder.

Foraging for mushrooms with John Cage: writing, art, photography and ephemera from an idiosyncratic chapter in the composer's life

Slip, pbk, 2 vols, 8 x 11 in. / 224 pgs / 40 color / 32 duotone / 28 bw. | 7/21/2020 | Out of stock
$60.00


Love, Icebox

THE JOHN CAGE TRUST
Edited with text by Laura Kuhn. Photography by Emily Martin.

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

Pbk, 6.75 x 9.5 in. / 144 pgs / 96 color. | 8/20/2019 | In stock
$24.95


John Cage: Diary

SIGLIO
Edited by Joe Biel, Richard Kraft. Afterword by David Rose.

“Over 16 years, beginning in 1965, John Cage compiled anecdotes, observations and koanlike tales, originally typing everything on an IBM Selectric and using chance methods to determine the formatting of texts that twist down each page. The Siglio edition preserves the graphic effects, but, more important, it gives a sense of the company he kept during these years—Marcel Duchamp, R. Buckminster Fuller, D.T. Suzuki—and of his passionate feeling about a world locked in a state of perpetual warfare. Cage has a reputation for being a Zen-inspired wit. He was also much more, an intensely engaged moral thinker.” –Holland Cotter, New York Times

Pbk, 5.75 x 8.25 in. / 200 pgs / 24 color / 176 duotone. | 10/21/2019 | In stock
$24.00


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

SPECTOR BOOKS
Edited with text by Dieter Daniels, Inke Arns. Text by Brandon LaBelle, David Toop, Dörte Schmidt, Julia H. Schröder, Jan Theben. Contributions by Hans-Friedrich Bormann, William Letterman, Kyle Gann, Branden W. Joseph, et al.

The most comprehensive publication to date on John Cage's iconic meditation on the sound of silence

Pbk, 9.5 x 13 in. / 288 pgs / 229 bw. | 6/26/2018 | In stock
$40.00


John Cage / Milan Grygar: Chance Operations & Intention

KERBER
Edited by Beate Reifenscheid. Text by Jean-Yves Bosseur, Hana Larvová, Suzana Leu.

Pbk, 9.5 x 11.75 in. / 180 pgs / 62 color / 26 bw. | 3/22/2016 | Out of stock
$47.50


Composition in Retrospect

EXACT CHANGE
By John Cage.

John Cage's poetical statement on indeterminacy, Duchamp, art, life and more

Pbk, 8 x 6 in. / 184 pgs. | 10/1/2008 | Out of stock
$15.95


          

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

John Cage: Diary

SIGLIO
Edited by Richard Kraft, Joe Biel.

Hbk, 6 x 8.5 in. / 176 pgs / 145 duotone. | 10/27/2015 | Not available
$32.00


Merce Cunningham: A Pictures Book for John Cage Xmas 1984

THE JOHN CAGE TRUST

Slip, spiralbound, 6 x 9 in. / 80 pgs / 39 color. | 5/31/2012 | Not available
$45.00


John Cage Book of Days 2012

THE JOHN CAGE TRUST
Edited by Laura Kuhn.

Pbk, 4.25 x 6 in. / 120 pgs / 52 duotone. | 7/31/2011 | Not available
$25.00


John Cage Book of Days 2011

THE JOHN CAGE TRUST
Edited by Laura Kuhn.

Pbk, 4.25 x 6 in. / 120 pgs / 26 duotone. | 7/31/2010 | Not available
$25.00


John Cage: Every Day is a Good Day: The Visual Art of John Cage

HAYWARD GALLERY PUBLISHING
Introduction by Roger Malbert. Text by Jeremy Millar, Lauren A. Wright, Helen Luckett. Interviews by Kathan Brown, Ray Kass, Laura Kuhn, Julie Lazar, Irving Sandler.

Pbk, 7.25 x 8.25 in. / 160 pgs / 80 color / 20 bw. | 9/30/2010 | Not available
$30.00


John Cage: A Mycological ForayJohn Cage: A Mycological Foray

Variations on Mushrooms

Published by Atelier Éditions.
Edited by Ananda Pellerin. Text by Kingston Trinder.

Imagined as an extended mushroom-foraging expedition, John Cage: A Mycological Foray gathers together Cage’s mushroom-themed compositions, photographs, illustrations and ephemera. Indeterminacy Stories and other writings by Cage are interwoven throughout the first volume within a central essay examining Cage’s enduring relationship with mycology. Also included is a transcript of Cage’s 1983 performance, MUSHROOMS et Variationes. The second volume is the inaugural reproduction of Cage’s 1972 portfolio, Mushroom Book, authored in collaboration with illustrator Lois Long and botanist Alexander H. Smith. Readers are thus drawn through the landscape of Cage’s mycologically centred oeuvre and interests, discovering assorted works, images, compositions, philosophies and ephemera, as one might encounter assorted fungi and flora while foraging.

John Cage: A Mycological Foray constitutes a new, idiosyncratic chapter in Cage’s oeuvre, a departure from the composer’s more established narrative.

American composer and music theorist John Cage (1912–92) was a pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music and a leading figure of the postwar avant-garde. His influence extended to the realms of dance, poetry, performance and visual art.



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Atelier Éditions

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Slip, pbk, 2 vols, 8 x 11 in. / 224 pgs / 40 color / 32 duotone / 28 bw.

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Catalog: SPRING 2020 p. 12   

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

Silence Today

Published by Spector Books.
Edited with text by Dieter Daniels, Inke Arns. Text by Brandon LaBelle, David Toop, Dörte Schmidt, Julia H. Schröder, Jan Theben. Contributions by Hans-Friedrich Bormann, William Letterman, Kyle Gann, Branden W. Joseph, et al.

John Cage's (1912–92) 4'33" premiered on August 29, 1952, distilling the composer's philosophical explorations of silence into four minutes, thirty-three seconds of performed, charged silence. Elegantly, provocatively, the piece asked: what does silence sound like?

Cage's questions about the nature of silence and sound continue to reverberate decades later; this volume—the most comprehensive on the piece to date—brings together new theoretical writings and artistic works exploring Cage's composition. A wide-ranging list of contributors, contemporary and historical—from Merce Cunningham to Rage Against the Machine—weigh in on Cage's work alongside Cage's original scores and the composer's own subsequent engagements with his most famous piece.



PUBLISHER
Spector Books

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 9.5 x 13 in. / 288 pgs / 229 bw.

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Catalog: FALL 2018 p. 149   

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John Cage / Milan Grygar: Chance Operations & IntentionJohn Cage / Milan Grygar: Chance Operations & Intention

Published by Kerber.
Edited by Beate Reifenscheid. Text by Jean-Yves Bosseur, Hana Larvová, Suzana Leu.

This book brings together the work of American composer and artist John Cage (1912–92) and Czech artist Milan Grygar (born 1926), both of whom experiment with performance, sound and chance in their art. Cage’s explorations at the borders of sound and image are well known; less familiar to an American audience are Grygar’s "acoustic drawings" and "living drawings" that expand the definition of drawing to include the visualization of sound and directly incorporate space, time and performance. The works of Cage and Grygar have occasionally been shown together since the 1970s, and the two artists had been planning a collaborative performance shortly before Cage’s death in 1992. This volume investigates the convergences between the works of these two artists for the first time.

PUBLISHER
Kerber

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Paperback, 9.5 x 11.75 in. / 180 pgs / 62 color / 26 bw.

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Catalog: SPRING 2016 p. 147   

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ISBN 9783735601551 TRADE
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John Cage: DiaryJohn Cage: Diary

How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)

Published by Siglio.
Edited by Richard Kraft, Joe Biel.

Composed over the course of 16 years, John Cage's Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) is one of his most prescient and personal works. A repository of observations, anecdotes, obsessions, jokes and koan like stories, the diary registers Cage's assessment of the times in which he lived as well as his often uncanny predictions about the world we live in now. With a great sense of play as well as purpose, Cage traverses vast territory, from postwar music to Watergate, from domestic minutiae to ideas on how to feed the world.
Typing on an IBM Selectric, Cage used chance operations to determine not only the word count and the application of various typefaces but also the number of letters per line, the patterns of indentation and--in the case of Part Three (published as a Great Bear pamphlet by Something Else Press)--color. The beautiful and unusual visual variances become almost musical as the physicality of the language on the page suggests the sonic. This first complete hardcover edition collects all eight parts Cage originally published in A Year from Monday, M and X. Coeditors Kraft and Biel have consulted these publications along with Cage's original manuscripts, and--with the Great Bear pamphlet as a guide--they have used chance operations to render the entire text in various combinations of red and blue as well as apply a set of 18 typefaces to the entire work.
Composer, philosopher, writer and artist, John Cage (1912-92) is one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. A pioneer in extending the boundaries of music, often composing works through chance operations, Cage also had an extraordinary impact on dance, poetry, performance and visual art.

PUBLISHER
Siglio

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 6 x 8.5 in. / 176 pgs / 145 duotone.

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Catalog: FALL 2015 p. 69   

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ISBN 9781938221101 TRADE
List Price: $32.00 CAD $42.50 GBP £28.00

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Sound Pages: John Cage's PublicationsSound Pages: John Cage's Publications

Published by Edizioni Corraini.
Edited by Giorgio Maffei, Fabio Carboni.

The colossal influence of John Cage (1912–1992) was disseminated as much through his publications as through performances and recorded music, and countless musicians, artists, writers and thinkers have testified to the impact of reading his 1961 book Silence. Divided into four sections--books, scores, records and miscellaneous documents such as posters--Sound Pages: John Cage’s Publications visually documents the composer’s published output, from limited editions and rarities to classics such as A Year from Monday and his recorded output on CD and vinyl. Throughout this volume, Cage’s insistence on graphic beauty and care in book-making--that an equal attention be paid to all aspects of the work, from typography to score notation--emerges as a key component of his sensibility. This volume is an essential publication for scholars and Cage’s many fans.

PUBLISHER
Edizioni Corraini

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 5.5 x 7.75 in. / 176 pgs / illustrated throughout.

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Catalog: SPRING 2014 p. 116   

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ISBN 9788897753032 TRADE
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John Cage & Thomas Wulffen: Rrose to the OccasionJohn Cage & Thomas Wulffen: Rrose to the Occasion

A Conversation

Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg.

In 1984, John Cage (born 1912) gave a concert at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and art critic and curator Thomas Wulffen (born 1931) seized the opportunity to talk with Cage about his work. This previously unpublished interview shows the composer in a relaxed and generous mood.

PUBLISHER
Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 4.25 x 5.5 in. / 104 pgs / 3 bw.

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Catalog: SPRING 2013 p. 178   

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ISBN 9783869843858 TRADE
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Merce Cunningham: A Pictures Book for John Cage Xmas 1984Merce Cunningham: A Pictures Book for John Cage Xmas 1984

Published by The John Cage Trust.

A Pictures Book for John Cage Xmas 1984 is a facsimile edition of a spiralbound notebook filled with choreographic notation by Merce Cunningham (1919–2009), a leader of the American avant-garde throughout his 70-year career and one of the most important choreographers and dancers of all time. This previously unpublished document is one of the most extensive elaborations of Cunningham’s choreographic notation in print, offering a rare glimpse into his methods, and in particular the stage work Pictures (1984). Originally presented as a holiday gift from Cunningham to his lifetime partner, John Cage, this lovingly reproduced edition now in turn serves as a gift from the John Cage Trust to the Cunningham Dance Foundation, on the occasion of the dance company’s final performance, New Year’s Eve 2011. With exquisite color notations that blend drawing and dance, it will also make a perfect gift for any fan of modern art or music.

PUBLISHER
The John Cage Trust

BOOK FORMAT
Slip, spiralbound, 6 x 9 in. / 80 pgs / 39 color.

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Catalog: SPRING 2012 p. 101   

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ISBN 9781935202790 TRADE
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John Cage Book of Days 2012John Cage Book of Days 2012

Published by The John Cage Trust.
Edited by Laura Kuhn.

Few twentieth-century artists have been as quotable as the composer, writer, philosopher, and visual artist John Cage, and his aphorisms have become mantras of fans the world over. Celebrating his gift for playful, concise wisdom, and published on the centenary of Cage's birth amid a huge wave of renewed interest in his life and work, The John Cage Book of Days 2012 is a pocket calendar that brings together the composer's words with noteworthy historical events in his life. This year we celebrate his great love of food, drawing upon his anecdotally rich text entitled “Where Are We Eating? and What Are We Eating?” (first published in Empty Words: Writings '73-'78, in 1978). With little thumbnail images drawn from Cage's favorite cookbooks and a soft cover sporting one of his extraordinary edible drawings (“No. 1, 1990” ) made entirely of lemon, sesame seeds and mushrooms, everything in this calendar conspires to make even the mundane task of managing a life pleasurable, fresh and delicious.

PUBLISHER
The John Cage Trust

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 4.25 x 6 in. / 120 pgs / 52 duotone.

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Catalog: FALL 2011 p. 56   

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ISBN 9781935202646 TRADE
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John Cage Book of Days 2011John Cage Book of Days 2011

2011 Calendar

Published by The John Cage Trust.
Edited by Laura Kuhn.

Few twentieth-century artists have been as quotable as the ever-pithy composer, writer, philosopher and artist John Cage, and his aphorisms have become the mantras of fans the world over. "I have nothing to say/and I am saying it/and that is poetry as I know it" is just one of his most famous observations, regularly cited by artists and thinkers across all disciplines. Celebrating Cage's gift for playful, concise wisdom, and produced by the John Cage Trust under the guidance of Laura Kuhn, the John Cage Book of Days is a 2011 pocket calendar that brings together the composer's words with noteworthy historical events in Cage's life as well as tiny visual fragments drawn from his artworks. Bound in a soft cover graced with one of his essential Ryoanji drawings, this Book of Days gathers all aspects of Cage's work into a volume that makes even the mundane task of managing a life pleasurable and fresh.

PUBLISHER
The John Cage Trust

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 4.25 x 6 in. / 120 pgs / 26 duotone.

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Catalog: FALL 2010 p. 65   

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ISBN 9781935202233 TRADE
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John Cage: Every Day is a Good Day: The Visual Art of John CageJohn Cage: Every Day is a Good Day: The Visual Art of John Cage

Published by Hayward Gallery Publishing.
Introduction by Roger Malbert. Text by Jeremy Millar, Lauren A. Wright, Helen Luckett. Interviews by Kathan Brown, Ray Kass, Laura Kuhn, Julie Lazar, Irving Sandler.

One of the twentieth century's most influential and iconoclastic protagonists, John Cage (1912-1992) may be described not so much as a composer, artist and author, as a thinker who applied his ideas equivalently to sound, visual art and writing. As with his music, the use of chance operations--in particular via the Chinese Book of Changes, or I Ching--was central to Cage's approach to visual art, determining technique, the placement of forms and even tonal values. Every Day is a Good Day provides the first broad assessment of Cage's art, and is fully illustrated with plates of his drawings, watercolors and prints, including series such as Where R=Ryoanji (1983-92). Cage's working methods and philosophies are brought to light in new interviews with key collaborators: printmaker and writer Kathan Brown, founder of Crown Point Press; Laura Kuhn, Director of the John Cage Trust; artist Ray Kass; and Julie Lazar, curator of Cage's composition for a museum, Rolywholyover: A Circus. Extracts from a 1966 interview between John Cage and critic Irving Sandler are also reproduced. At the heart of the book is a "Companion to John Cage," a selection of quotes by Cage and notes on key themes and influences, all of which make it essential reading on this important figure of the twentieth-century avant garde.

PUBLISHER
Hayward Gallery Publishing

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 7.25 x 8.25 in. / 160 pgs / 80 color / 20 bw.

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Catalog: FALL 2010 p. 176   

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ISBN 9781853322839 TRADE
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John Cage Book of DaysJohn Cage Book of Days

2010 Calendar

Published by The John Cage Trust.
Edited by Laura Kuhn.

Few twentieth-century artists have been as quotable as the ever-pithy composer, writer, philosopher and artist John Cage, and his aphorisms have become the mantras of fans the world over. "I have nothing to say/and I am saying it/and that is poetry as I know it" is just one of his most famous observations, regularly cited by artists and thinkers across all disciplines. Celebrating Cage's gift for playful, concise wisdom, and produced by the John Cage Trust under the guidance of its director, Laura Kuhn, the John Cage Book of Days is a 2010 pocket calendar that brings together the composer's words with noteworthy historical events in Cage's life, as well as tiny fragments drawn from his visual artworks. Bound in a soft cover that features one of his famous Ryoanji drawings, this Book of Days gathers all aspects of Cage's work into a volume that makes even the mundane task of managing a life pleasurable and fresh.

PUBLISHER
The John Cage Trust

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6 x 4.5 in. / 120 pgs / 52 color.

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Catalog: FALL 2009 p. 107   

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ISBN 9781935202011 TRADE
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Composition in RetrospectComposition in Retrospect

Published by Exact Change.
By John Cage.

Written in his characteristic “mesostics” (lines of prose poetry linked by a central vertical acrostic), Composition in Retrospect is a statement of methodology in which composer John Cage examines the central issues of his work: indeterminacy, imitation, variable structure and contingency. Finished only shortly before his death in 1992, Composition in Retrospect completes the documentation of Cage’s thought that began with his classic book Silence (1961), but it is an introduction and invitation to his work as much as a summary or conclusion. Also included in this volume (at Cage’s request) is “Themes and Variations,” a piece written in 1982 about friends and heroes such as Jasper Johns, Buckminster Fuller, Marcel Duchamp and Erik Satie. Together these pieces form a book that is both a testament to the artists Cage admired and a clear statement of his own ars poetica.



PUBLISHER
Exact Change

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Paperback, 8 x 6 in. / 184 pgs.

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Catalog: FALL 2012 p. 63   

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ISBN 9781878972118 TRADE
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Love, IceboxLove, Icebox

Letters from John Cage to Merce Cunningham

Published by The John Cage Trust.
Edited with text by Laura Kuhn. Photography by Emily Martin.

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.



PUBLISHER
The John Cage Trust

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

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Catalog: FALL 2019 p. 59   

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ISBN 9781942884385 TRADE
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John Cage: DiaryJohn Cage: Diary

How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)

Published by Siglio.
Edited by Joe Biel, Richard Kraft. Afterword by David Rose.

Now available in an expanded paperback edition, Diary registers Cage’s assessment of the times in which he lived as well as his often uncanny portents about the world we live in now. With a great sense of play as well as purpose, Cage traverses vast territory, from the domestic minutiae of everyday life to ideas about how to feed the world. He used chance operations to determine not only the word count and the application of various typefaces but also the number of letters per line, the patterns of indentation, and—in the case of Part Three, originally published by Something Else Press—color. The unusual visual variances on the page become almost musical as language takes on a physical and aural presence.

While Cage used chance operations to expand the possibilities of creating and shaping his work beyond the limitations of individual taste, Diary nonetheless accumulates into a complex reflection of Cage’s sensibilities as a thinker and citizen of the world, illuminating his social and political awareness, as well as his idealism and sense of humor: it becomes an oblique but indelible portrait of one the most influential figures of the 20th-century American avant-garde.

Collecting all eight parts into a single volume, coeditors Joe Biel and Richard Kraft also used chance operations to render the entire text in various combinations of red and blue (used by Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles for Part Three) as well as to apply a single set of 18 fonts to the entire work. In the editors’ note, Kraft and Biel elucidate the procedure of chance operations and demonstrate its application, giving readers a rare opportunity to see how the text is transformed.

This expanded paperback edition reproduces the 2015 hardback edition, with a new essay by mycologist and Cage aficionado David Rose and, most important, an addendum that includes many facsimile pages of Cage’s handwritten notebook of a ninth part in progress, bringing the reader into compelling proximity to Cage’s process and the raw material from which Diary was made.



PUBLISHER
Siglio

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 5.75 x 8.25 in. / 200 pgs / 24 color / 176 duotone.

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Catalog: FALL 2019 p. 58   

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ISBN 9781938221217 TRADE
List Price: $24.00 CAD $31.00 GBP £21.00

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