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REVIEW
Every Day is a Good Day
Baltic, Gateshead
19 June - 5 September 2010
Reviewed by: Alice Thickett »
Chance- a creative cop out or an artistic achievement?
The exhibition at Gateshead’s Baltic, shows that there is more to using chance in art than flipping a coin and relying on luck. The exhibition- conceived by artist Jeremy Millar, ‘Every Day is a Good Day’, presents to the public over 100 works on paper from the artist and composer John Cage.
Each of Cage’s pieces is individually titled in a leaflet (which can be picked up in the gallery). As the pieces are moved during the duration of the exhibition using a computerised version of the Chinese oracle ‘I Ching’- that Cage himself, used to create his work- they cannot be titled in situ. It is explained in a second exhibition leaflet, that Cage disliked linear displays and described one of his own exhibitions, which used the same chance curation methods- ‘Rolywholyover A Circus’, as a, ‘composition for museum.’ [1] The Baltic also displays some of Cage’s musical compositions, played through headphones on the other side of the gallery wall. The sporadic, high and low notes and silences in Cage’s music arrangements mimic the placing of his paper pieces- some high up, others low down etc; the gallery walls could be read like a musical score.
I must- embarrassingly- admit that I do not remember any of Cage’s individual pieces in great detail. Some of his work, from the series titled ‘Ryoanji’, art critic David Sylvester describes as ‘among the most beautiful prints and drawings made anywhere in the 1980s.’ [2] but for me, the exhibition was about something much more than displaying art in a gallery space.
The use of chance in art could be thought of as an easy way to relinquish responsibility. To simply say that fate chose the outcome of a piece and that you (the artist) had no control over its outcome, would leave little room for someone to criticise the artist or the work itself. On the other hand, chance could be seen as a brave process. To let fate decide the outcome of a piece means that you are leaving the work’s final aesthetics entirely down to luck. The temptation to go against the decision of the chance method, to make something YOUR way instead, would be big. To make a piece of work that you, yourself, may not choose to make, completely opposes the majority of contemporary artist’s creative thinking.
John Cage explained that the ‘real art’ and the correct way to use chance methods is in asking the right questions, ‘The principle underlying of the results of those chosen operations is in the questions.’ [3] (John Cage).
Chance creates answers we may not even know existed. Unlike an artist, chance doesn’t care what a critic might think, or lose it’s nerve to exhibit. It leaves out judgements made by emotions that give an artist much more freedom to create something original. John Cage’s paintings, in my opinion, are not particularly eye catching but the exhibition idea as a whole; the process and thought behind the work; and the almost completely handing over art to fate- but not quite; is mind expanding.
[1] BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art: 19th June –5th September 2010: Every Day is a Good Day: Baltic Gateshead
[2] Baltic: Present Exhibitions: http://www.balticmill.com/whatsOn/present/ExhibitionDetail.php?exhibID=142
[3] James Pritchett: Writings on Cage (& others): Introduction to The music of John Cage:Copyright 1993
Writer detail:
Alice Thickett - Fine Art BA Hons
Venue detail:
Baltic
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The non-interventionist creative process is somehow paradoxical. The aim to lose control and free music from human intervention could only be achieved by designing algorithms, i.e. painstakingly elaborated control mechanisms that would abolish the subjective intentions. This method seems to merely move the design process back one step. Cage restricted his intentional gestures through chance operations rigorously put together by himself. He retained control over many aesthetic choices – the basic material of each piece was carefully chosen by him and shaped by his own personal predilections. He thus was intervening in the compositional process. In Imaginary Landscape No.4 (1951) for 12 radios, 24 performers and director, two performers each operate radios whose frequency, amplitude, and timbre changes are notated. The performers are instructed exactly on when and how to turn the tuning and volume controls on the radio, allowing them little, if no, liberty to improvise on the basis of their personal preferences. What results is a situation where the composer has kept authorship of the overall design by setting a fixed compositional structure that forces the performer to engage with unpredictable sounds. The development of the piece – the performance – is thus generally controlled but open to unforeseeable results through contact with the radio waves. Cage disliked radio and his gesture could be seen as liberating the sounds from its institutional settings. The use of chance or algorithm in musical composition has, in fact, often been a means to gain control of the musical texture rather than liberate the music of authorial intention. Same for the Algorists, who use the computer as a driving wheel to compose their visual artworks - their aim is less about losing control than expanding one’s personal vista and creating the environment for an inspired, aesthetic experience to occur. John W. Fowler muses on the potential of the algorithmic method to push the bo
posted on 2010-10-21 by Viviane Blanchard
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...boundaries of creativity beyond our human limitations, letting nature have its way: ‘if one is convinced that some piece of music must have been derived algorithmically because its beauty seems beyond the means of the unaided human, well that is what we are trying to achieve, isn’t it?
posted on 2010-10-21 by Viviane Blanchard