Object number1988.21.1

Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel

DateNd

Artist John Cage (American, 1912-1992)

CultureAmerican

MediumLithograph

DimensionsSheet: 28 x 40 in. (71.12 x 101.6 cm)

Credit LineGift of Alice Frieder Weston, class of 1946

On View

Not on view

Period20th c

Classification(s)

SignedSigned (LRC)

Vassar Exhibitions

Care Everywhere: Photography and Print as a Lens on Care

Label TextBest known as a composer, John Cage created this piece in 1969, a year after the death of his friend and mentor Marcel Duchamp, an important avant-garde artist of the twentieth century. It was some of the first visual art Cage ever made and was largely inspired by a comment made by his friend Jasper Johns, also an important painter and sculptor. When asked by an arts publication to create a work in tribute to Duchamp, Johns commented, “I don’t want to say anything about Marcel.” Cage adapted this comment as the title of his work. In this piece, he used the ancient Chinese divination text I Ching in order to methodically combine letters, words, and fragmented images to create a disorienting and indiscernible piece of work. Johns’s inability to say anything about Duchamp expresses the insufficient and futile use of language that may come with expressing grief. Cage cares for both Johns and his late friend Duchamp in his response; here care manifests as a physical object through which a space is made for both his own grief and his friend’s grief.

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