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26/9/2012

Four exhibitions

Museum of Contemporary Art - MAC, Lyon

Cage's Satie
Composition for Museum

Curator: Laura Kuhn

John Cage was a singularly inventive, highly influential, and much beloved American composer, writer, philosopher, and visual artist.

Cage’s Satie: Composition for Museum is a multi-sensory exhibition of works by John Cage that celebrates his enduring love of the French composer Erik Satie. Cage was indebted to many artists throughout his life, James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, and Henry David Thoreau among them. Of all the individuals of influence, however, Erik Satie holds a place of particular reverence and honor.

The present exhibition takes a fresh approach to the presentation of John Cage’s oeuvre by foregoing the usual emphasis on precious artifacts in favor of sounded works.

The first floor brings 12 compositions into a spatialized and randomized remix: Cheap Imitation, Chorals, Etcetera, Extended Lullaby, Four3, Furniture Music Etcetera, Socrate, Sports (Perpetual Tango and Swinging), Song Books (Solos for Voice 3-92), Sonnekus2, Two6, and Letter(s) to Erik Satie. This audio collage for the ears is complemented by associated materials for the eyes: rare video footage of works from collaborative projects with the legendary American choreographer Merce Cunningham and manipulated scanned images drawn from associated scores and manuscripts from C.F. Peters/Peters Edition and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

The second floor showcases two additional Satie inspirations: James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet (1982), Cage’s whimsical radio play cast here into a new interactive sound installation, and The First Meeting of the Satie Society (1985-1992), Cage’s stunning late-life collaborative merger of poetry, performance, visual art, sculpture, and music. This work was conceived as a collection of “presents” for Erik Satie, an invitation by John Cage to his esteemed artist friends to fill a Marcel Duchamp-inspired cracked glass valise with words and images bound into eight hand made books. Contributors in the visual aspects include Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, and Cage himself. Also on view is Cage’s “Satie Memorabilia,” an eclectic collection that includes his rarely seen facsimile of Vexations.

Image: Photo of John Cage, Los Angeles 1989 © Betty Freeman

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La Monte Young et Marian Zazeela, Dream House, 1990-2012

A mythical work, the Dream House is a sound and light installation created by La Monte Young, inventor of the concept of eternal music. The music moves the hanging mobiles, created by Marian Zazeela, in a barely perceptible way. For the listener, the experience is literally about immerging oneself in sound, observing its nuances. This is an experience conducive to reflection, whereupon the listener is as attentive to his/her inner being as he/she is to the music. Within this 500 m2 space, bathed in light and music, the visitor can enjoy unique sensations and an unusual experience of duration: everyone is invited to find their place in the work by sitting, or strolling at their own pace, appreciating the sound variations provoked by their own movements, however minimal these may be.

In 1998, macLYON invited Marian and La Monte to expose one of their Dream House sets (then belonging to the FNAC) in a final version in Lyon, on the museum’s third floor. The Lyon Dream House, as it is referred to by the artists, encompasses—according to Marian’s calculations, “a volume of 101,598 cubed feet of light”. It’s the biggest installation after the Harrison Street Building Dream House in New York. But “the Lyon house takes up 6,195 square feet whereas the New York one only takes up 4,900”1, she adds. Following this exhibition, at the request of the artists and in accordance with the FNAC, the work was deposited to the Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art “to the space that belongs to it”, according to La Monte Young. The piece entered the museum’s collection, under the inventory number 2007.12.5. The Lyon Dream House , combining sound, space and light, contains all of the terms or concepts common to Marian and La Monte’s collaborative work.

“The concept of the Dream House is an idea that developed from my piece The Four Dreams of China which I composed in 1962 and which contains the concept of an infinite piece of music. (…) When I realized that a musical piece could permanently develop and evolve if it could have a permanent place where musicians could play every day, I came up wi th the idea of the Dream House: a building where musicians live and work, with a big space for performances and enough musicians so that there is always some people playing (…) In 1966, when I started experimenting wi th electronic music — my group The Theatre of Eternal Music had been in existence for a few years at that stage — I began to realize that working with musicians was very expensive. I therefore developed the idea of electronic sounds held over a long period of time, so that since then, I combine live and electronic music.”
— La Monte Young

For La Monte Young, every sound can be music as long as the existence of sound is conceivable. Founder of the American minimalist musical movement and above all, an exceptional musician, he is known for his interest in sustained notes and for his quest for just intonation. Drift Studies he has created since 1966 are musical pieces that marry these two aspects.

Produced and directed by Jacqueline Caux, the documentary Prism’s Colors, Mechanics of Time (96minutes, 2009) which investigates the musical Avant-Garde that has begun in the 1960s and is continuing in this early 21st century, is screened in the museum’s conference room throughout the exhibition.

This exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Daniel Caux (1940 – 2008).

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George Brecht, Partitions, Glass et Chair Events... 1959–2012

In 1986, macLYON organized the first George Brecht retrospective, the only in his lifetime, dedicated to Events. True to his nature, Brecht did not come to his own exhibition. Although he considered the “activity” of exhibiting to be important, he was indifferent to whether what was displayed was art or not: “I never think of what I do as being art or not. It's an activity. That's all”. The artworks on display were therefore borrowed from collectors or rebuilt. Reconstructed artworks were approved of by the artist, through photographs and telephone confirmation. A letter bears testimony to this exchange.

A selection from Brecht’s Glass & Chair Events and Scores will be displayed to coincide with the 2012 Cage’s Satie: Composition for Museum (curated by Laura Kuhn, at macLYON).

George Brecht's various works are presented in the exhibition.

Event Scores: George Brecht wanted his compositions to be performed with the utmost seriousness because these were indeed “works of art”, even if the author himself chose not to use this term, as he feared it would immediately “categorize” his work. His compositions can be performed by everyone, based on what the performer understands, feels and imagines from these oftentimes rather enigmatic musical scores.
Of all the Scores in Water Yam (a book or anthology of Brecht’s Events in the form of a small box published in 1963 containing printed cards), the museum has chosen to put the spotlight on a small selection of these. They are placed on the wall, like paintings (we hope that Brecht wouldn’t reproach us such an interpretation; indeed, for Brecht ‘interpretation’ by its very nature would allow such a proposition).

Event Glasses are glass rectangles, of different sizes, whose dimensions are randomly chosen. They are mounted on metallic supports and the word “Event” is engraved on each piece of glass. Therefore, everything that happens behind the glass, according to the observer’s point of view, is an “Event”: “Everything belongs to the same whole, this is the event”. The position of each Event Glass is drawn by lot using a table with random numbers: the Event can therefore be indifferently positioned in the centre of an empty space, in front of another artwork or at the end of a corridor.

The Chair Events are a poetic association of ideas and actions which a priori, have no direct relationship or connection. Chairs and objects are sometimes accompanied by stories or information, much of which has been taken from the Guinness Book of Records.

Vide is a relatively large pebble that has been shaped over time by the river Rhône. It was chosen by Brecht along the banks of the river and was then engraved with the word “Vide”.

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Richard Buckminster Fuller, Domes and Archives, 1960, 1965

Initially created in 1960 and 1965, two domes by Richard Buckminster Fuller (reinstalled for the 11th Biennale de Lyon, A Terrible Beauty is Born ) have found a final resting place in the collection of macLYON (donated from the Buckminster Fuller Estate). The multi-skilled architect and designer Richard Buckminster Fuller is above all known for his forward-looking vision of world problems and the solutions he put forward to resolve these. In the 1930s, he developed theories inspired by an ongoing exchange with nature, based on his observations and research into balance or equilibrium. This work has often been qualified as utopian. However, some of his global predictions have been proved correct and a number of his solutions have been implemented. In many respects, the geodesic dome is his most famous invention. This dome derives its strength from the interconnected triangles closed into a spherical shape, an architectonic feature that Fuller saw reflected in the natural world. The two domes - now parts of the museum’s Collectio - have been constructed using local materials in order to limit their environmental impact and are the perfect example of Fuller’s work.

The two domes were constructed according to the guidelines of Jaime Snyder (the grandson of the inventor and co-founder of the Buckminster Fuller Institute) and architect, Deacon Marvel. They represent the inventor’s main principles as well as embodying Buckminster Fuller’s theories; the domes are at once an architectural project, a utopian form, a work of art, a sculpture and a structure. The documents and archives of the Fuller estate allow his works to be inscribed into the realm of prediction, despite their utopian concepts: the artist’s visionary projections can be seen as ideals of his integrative approach.

The two works given to the museum are variations on the geodesic dome, one of Richard Buckminster Fuller’s major inventions. Used in the construction of civic buildings, protest camps, military radar stations, children’s games or exhibitions, these structures are based upon geometric principles developed by Fuller inspired by his observations of nature. The inventor applies the concept of the geodesic line (the shortest line joining two points on a surface) to construct the most balanced, lightweight and resistant structure possible. His domes are a synthesis of all of the inventor’s fundamental precepts, combining a reasoned and aesthetic use of technological progress with a holistic conception of man’s relationship to nature.

Richard Buckminster Fuller was born into a family of numerous activists committed to improving all aspects of society. He was influenced by the transcendental movement, of which his great aunt, Margaret Fuller, was an important figure. This philosophical and cultural movement driven by Emerson in the 1830s, affirms the essential unity of the universe integrating man into the natural world. Fuller’s vision of nature was an all-encompassing one, at the heart of which man must find his place.
Fuller extols a systemic or holistic vision of the world which he detailed in a large body of writings and conferences. His idea of “doing more with less” was based on a high level of awareness of the limits of the physical potential of the planet, as well as on a solid faith in man’s commitment.


Press contacts Museum of Contemporary Art - MAC
Muriel Jaby / Élise Vion-Delphin t. +33 (0)4 72691705 / 25 communication@mac-lyon.com

Opening Thursday September 27th, 2012

Museum of Contemporary Art - MAC
Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon Cité Internationale
81 quai Charles de Gaulle 69006 Lyon
The Museum is open: Wednesday to Sunday from 11:00 to 18:00
closed every Monday, Tuesday, 1st January, and 25th December.
Admission
Full: 6 €
Reduced: 4 €
The museum is free for under 18s

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