Branden W. Joseph, White On White
Branden W. Joseph, White On White
Branden W. Joseph, White On White
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. .
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Critical
Inquiry.
http://www.jstor.org
White on White
Branden W. Joseph
This paper was originally delivered as a talk at the Center for Advanced Studies in
the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. A slightly different version
appeared in French in Les Cahiersdu MuseeNational d'artmodernein Spring 2000.
1. Robert Rauschenberg, letter to Betty Parsons, 18 Oct. 1951, in Walter Hopps, Robert
Rauschenberg:TheEarly 1950s (Houston, 1991), p.230; hereafter abbreviated RR. An unfor-
tunately abridged and somewhat inaccurately transcribed version of the letter appears in
Mary Lynn Kotz, Rauschenberg:Art and Life (New York, 1990), p. 78. Rauschenberg's spell-
ing, punctuation, and capitalization have been retained throughout.
2. Quote taken from notes of a Rauschenberg interview by Hopps, 18-22 Jan. 1991,
Captiva Island, Fla., located in Rauschenberg's archives, New York City.
90
CriticalInquiry Autumn2000 91
they are large white (1 white as 1 GOD) canvases organized and se-
lected with the experience of time and presented with the innocence
of a virgin. Dealing with the suspense, excitement and body of an
organic silence, the restriction and freedom of absence, the plastic
fullness of nothing, the point a circle begins and ends. they are a
natural response to the current pressures of the faithless and a pro-
moter of intuitional optimism. It is completly irrelevent that I am
making them-Today is their creater. [RR, p. 230] 3
5. On Greenberg's teaching at Black Mountain College, see Mary Emma Harris, The
Arts at BlackMountain College(Cambridge, Mass., 1987), p. 214.
6. This trope runs throughout Greenberg's criticism. For a particularly clear (al-
though later) presentation, see Clement Greenberg, "Modernist Painting" (1960), Modern-
ism with a Vengeance,1957-1969, vol. 4 of The CollectedEssaysand Criticism,ed. John O'Brian
(Chicago, 1993), pp. 85-93.
7. On the historical avant-garde manifestation of the monochrome, see Yve-Alain
Bois, "Malhvich, le carre, le degre zero," Macula 1 (1976): 28-49. Despite the extreme posi-
tion represented by the WhitePaintings, at the moment of their inception Rauschenberg
seems to have judged them to exist within the framework established by Greenberg. All of
Rauschenberg's recollections over the years point to the conclusion that, while he saw the
WhitePaintings as advancing painting further along its developmental path, they nonethe-
less maintained a viable presence and quality as paintings. As he said in recounting his
initial enthusiasm to Barbara Rose, "I was so innocently and indulgently excited about the
pieces because they worked. I did them as an experiment to see how much you could pull
away from an image and still have an image" (Barbara Rose, An InterviewwithRobertRauschen-
berg [New York, 1987], pp. 45-46). See similar recollections by Rauschenberg in Richard
Kostelanetz, "AConversation with Robert Rauschenberg," PartisanReview 35 (Winter 1968):
94, and Julia Brown Turrell, "Talking to Robert Rauschenberg," in RauschenbergSculpture
(Fort Worth, Tex., 1995), p. 76.
FIG. 1.-Robert Rauschenberg,WhitePainting,1951. One panel.
FIG.2.-Robert Rauschenberg,Crucifixion
andReflection,
c. 1950.
94 Branden WJoseph Whiteon White
duly noted their culminating role within the history of modernist paint-
ing. Of the two WhitePaintings then on view Crehan wrote:
8. Hubert Crehan, "Raw Duck," Art Digest, 15 Sept. 1953, p. 25; hereafter abbrevi-
ated "RD."
9. For a similar evaluation, see James Fitzsimmons, "Art,"Arts and Architecture70 (Oct.
1953): 9, 32-36. One almost has to pity Crehan; he had no idea how bad it could get. On
the occasion of Rauschenberg's first exhibit of Combine paintings at the Egan Gallery in
late 1954, Crehan's annoyed review would read in its entirety, "Since he is determined to
avoid the responsibility of an artist, it is better that he should show blank canvases rather
than the contraptions that he has hung in this side show" (Hubert Crehan, "Fortnight in
Review: Rauschenberg," Arts Digest, 1 Jan. 1955, p. 30).
10. Greenberg, "Recentness of Sculpture," (1967), Modernismwith a Vengeance,vol. 4 of
The CollectedEssaysand Criticism,p. 251.
11. Michael Fried would most explicitly formulate the role of negation in modernist
painting in his ThreeAmericanPainters:KennethNoland,Jules Olitski,Frank Stella (1965), Art
and Objecthood: Essaysand Reviews (Chicago, 1998), pp. 213-65. Having taken great pains to
present Noland, Olitski and Stella's work in terms of a "dialectic of modernism" in line
with the thinking of Hegel, Marx, Lukaics, and Merleau-Ponty, Fried found the situation
"complicated" by the existence of neo-dada, pp. 217, 259.
CriticalInquiry Autumn2000 95
14. See Rosalind E. Krauss, Passagesin Modern Sculpture (Cambridge, Mass., 1977),
and Annette Michelson, "Robert Morris: An Aesthetics of Transgression," in RobertMorris
(Washington, D.C., 1969), pp. 7-79.
15. That the neo-avant-garde merely recycled earlier avant-garde strategies is the the-
sis of Peter Biirger's Theoryof theAvant-Garde,trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis, 1984). For
an important elaboration and critique of Biirger's position that nonetheless follows his con-
clusions with regard to the work of Rauschenberg and Cage, see Foster, "What's Neo about
the Neo-Avant-Garde?" October,no. 70 (Fall 1994): 5-32. This essay is reprinted in a slightly
altered version as "Who'sAfraid of the Neo-Avant-Garde?" Foster, TRR, pp. 1-32.
16. Although the canonical works and writings of Minimalism date from the mid-
1960s, 1961 marks the year that Robert Morris rejected Cage's aesthetic position to begin
what would become his Minimalist pursuit of phenomenological formalism. See Morris,
"Letters to John Cage," October,no. 81 (Summer 1997): 70-79. 1961 also marks the year
in which Yvonne Rainer completed Satiefor Two, the last of her choreographed works to
CriticalInquiry Autumn2000 97
employ a Cagean chance score. See Yvonne Rainer, Work1961-73 (Halifax, N.S. and New
York, 1974), p. 7.
17. John Cage, "On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Work,"(1961) Silence (Mid-
dletown, Conn., 1961), p. 102; hereafter abbreviated "ORR."
18. For a discussion of Duchamp's Tum', see Krauss, "Notes on the Index: Part 1," in
The Originalityof the Avant-Gardeand OtherModernistMyths (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), pp.
196-209.
19. Littirature,n.s., no. 5, 1 Oct. 1922, n.p.
20. Calvin Tomkins, Off the Wall:RobertRauschenbergand theArt Worldof Our Time (New
York, 1980), pp. 129-30; hereafter abbreviated OW
21. Not only had Cage met and visited with the Arensbergs, but, at the time still
pursuing interests in painting as well as musical composition, he reports having discussed
his art with Walter Arensberg. See Alan Gillmor, "Interview with John Cage," Contact 14
(Autumn 1976): 18.
22. Cage has stated that Moholy-Nagy's book was extremely influential to his thinking
from the 1930s on and that reading it was what attracted him to teach at Moholy-Nagy's
Chicago Institute of Design in 1941. See John Cage Talkingto Hans G. Helms on Music and
Politics, (Munich: S-Press Tapes, 1975), audiocassette; see the abridged version published as
Cage, "Reflections of a Progressive Composer on a Damaged Society," October,no. 82 (Fall
1997): 77-93. See also Cage and Joan Retallack, Musicage: Cage Muses on Words,Art, Music
(Hanover, N.H., 1996), p. 87.
98 Branden WJoseph Whiteon White
pol ;
- w
1?4 k
,z
"AIMMAS
..e> .....'Icy Wks-
If ol " Mil
FIG.4.-Louise Lawler,ShadowSummer,
1987.
Whiteon Whiteof 1918 (fig. 7).23 Virtually ignoring the depiction of the
square on its surface, Moholy-Nagy described Malevich's work as "the
projection screen" and explained,
a L om sa
am - aCmm...t&t yvwii:iiiai: Sa m
comME
a•ov a.cIa LI•s • .e• ... :.A:: sumim t: SE: MA
COMMR -wL SOlME e~•..•.•t won:l-Ave
•lt• mi.• tD Ua rePat
.I
:
:.••::.I:?:.:
: :.::
.::!:. i::•:i•;i•!:::..:.i;•ii:..•"•i:.:.:i;:i:::
!.i:!':..:
•
:• .: ::• * :• i ," . ...::
•i".:::.•:.::..•:!::i:::.-:::.:.
Looking at the Large Glass, the thing that I like so much is that I can
focus my attention wherever I wish. It helps me to blur the distinc-
tion between art and life and produces a kind of silence in the work
itself. There is nothing in it that requires me to look in one place or
25. See my '"John Cage and the Architecture of Silence," October,no. 81 (Summer
1997): 81-104.
26. Moholy-Nagy mentions Duchamp only once, in a footnote, and then only to note
that he is being "neglected" (NV,p. 40).
FIG. 8.-Marcel Duchamp, The Bride StrippedBare by her Bachelors,Even (The Large
Glass), 1915-23.
CriticalInquiry Autumn2000 103
27. Moira Roth and William Roth, "John Cage on Marcel Duchamp," Art in America61
(Nov.-Dec. 1973): 78.
28. As Cage wrote in the foreword to Silence, "what was Dada in the 1920's is now, with
the exception of the work of Marcel Duchamp, just art" (p. xi).
29. Ibid. This statement first appeared in Cage's "Preface to Indeterminacy"(1959), in
John Cage: Writer,ed. Kostelanetz (New York, 1993), p. 79. See also Cage, "JuillardLecture"
(1952), A Yearfrom Monday (Middletown, Conn., 1967), p. 102; "Experimental Music"
(1957), Silence,pp. 7-8, hereafter abbreviated "EM;"Cage's comments in Kostelanetz, "Con-
versation with John Cage," in John Cage:An Anthology,ed. Kostelanetz (New York, 1970), pp.
11, 26; and in Michael Kirby and Richard Schechner, "An Interview with John Cage," in
Happeningsand OtherActs, ed. Mariellen R. Sandford (New York, 1995), p. 64.
30. Stone, Stone, Stone (c. 1951) was included in the Parsons Exhibition, as was most
likely Untitled[With Collageand Mirror](c. 1951). See RR, pp. 52-53.
31. Cage, "45' for a Speaker" (1954), Silence, p. 161, hereafter abbreviated "S." See
also p. 187. See also his comments in "Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?"
(1961), Silence, pp. 238-39, and "Happy New Ears!" (c. 1964), A Yearfrom Monday, p. 31.
Although this set of ideas would seem to have derived from Cage, issues of registering
external events within the artwork would have meshed with Rauschenberg's own early in-
terest in photography. In both their receptivity to the indexical traces of light and shadow,
104 Branden WJoseph Whiteon White
FIG. 9.-Robert Rauschenberg and Susan Weil, LightBornein Darkness,c. 1949. Mono-
print: exposed blueprint paper.
Cage has always been clear that his infamous 4'33" of silence was
composed after seeing Rauschenberg's WhitePaintings.32 In this, the most
controversial of Cage's works, a performer sits at his or her instrument
for the requisite amount of time without sounding a single note, while
the audience hears the sounds occurring in the surroundings. Cage ex-
plained that not only did seeing Rauschenberg's WhitePaintings give him
the "courage" to compose a piece of such radicality, they made him fear
that the development of music had fallen behind that of art.33 "Oh, yes,
I must," Cage recalls thinking, "otherwise I'm lagging, otherwise music
is lagging.""34
The idea of a completely silent piece, however, had been in Cage's
mind for some time, and ideas already developed about it influenced his
as well as in the idea that they could be reproduced at any time-even existing as multiple
copies (RR, p. 80)-Rauschenberg's WhitePaintings can be understood as an appropriation
of the logic of mechanical reproduction rather than as a pure, autonomous reaction
against it.
32. As Cage wrote in the preface to his article on Rauschenberg in Silence:"To Whom
It May Concern: The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later" ("ORR,"p. 98).
Rauschenberg has recently stated of Cage that "he wrote the silent piece because of my
paintings. And there were lots more" (Turrell, "Talking to Robert Rauschenberg," p. 62).
33. Richard Dyer, "A Refreshing, Surprising Exchange with John Cage," Boston Globe,
20 Oct. 1988, p. 88, and Deborah Ann Campana, "Form and Structure in the Music ofJohn
Cage" (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1985), p. 103.
34. Kostelanetz, Conversingwith Cage, p. 67.
CriticalInquiry Autumn2000 105
......i*......
...... ..i..:i:;:ii
.......??i:;:ii:
......... i?:i
..........
"iiliiliii
l:::'''''::~~:';:
0':~
A'":"".....
.."
"?:'
"::'?: .....
35. For a more thorough discussion of the transformations in Cage's idea of silence,
see Eric De Visscher, "'There's no such thing as silence ... ':John Cage's Poetics of Silence,"
in WritingsAboutJohn Cage, ed. Kostelanetz (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1993), pp. 117-133, and my
"Experimental Art: John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and the Neo-Avant-Garde" (Ph.D.
diss., Harvard University, 1999), esp. pp. 51-56.
36. This story is recounted many times in Cage's writings; see, for example, "EM,"p.
8; "Experimental Music: Doctrine," pp. 13-14, hereafter abbreviated "EMD";"Composition
as Process," p. 23; "S,"p. 168; and A YearfromMonday, p. 134.
106 Branden WJoseph Whiteon White
37. See Henri Bergson, CreativeEvolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (New York, 1911),
pp. 272-98, hereafter abbreviated CE. To my knowledge, the impact of Bergson's thinking
upon Cage has not previously been noted. Cage makes explicit reference to Bergson at the
end of the article "Experimental Music," where he writes: "Here we are concerned with the
coexistence of dissimilars, and the central points where fusion occurs are many: the ears of
the listeners wherever they are. This disharmony, to paraphrase Bergson's statement about
disorder, is simply a harmony to which many are unaccustomed" ("EM,"p. 12). This idea
of Bergson's to which Cage makes reference is to be found on pp. 220 and following in
CreativeEvolution and forms part of Bergson's larger critique of negation.
CriticalInquiry Autumn2000 107
:ftv1Aj?-l
".
FIG. 11.--John Cage, 4'33", 1952. Scorein ProportionalNotation, 1953. Key and first page.
lines form the structure of 4'33". A key provided at the bottom of the
page reads "1 page = 7 inches = 56" [seconds]" and provides the means
for reading the score horizontally across the page to give the timing of the
movements. Visually, the score acts just as one of Rauschenberg's White
Paintings; the lights, shadows and particles falling on it become analogues
of the environmental sounds occurring within the piece when "per-
formed" (fig. 12).
41. See Cage, "ORR," p. 100 and Cage, "Happy New Ears!" in A Yearfrom Monday, p.
31. On Cage's study of Coomaraswamy, see "AC,"pp. 95-99.
CriticalInquiry Autumn2000 109
42. This contrasts markedly with certain of Coomaraswamy's ideas of nature, largely
held to be the source of Cage's own. According to Patterson, Coomaraswamy ultimately felt
that all of existence was already present, that there was nothing actually being created. As
Patterson summarizes Coomaraswamy's attitude, "All human activities and extant artifacts
throughout all time and within all cultures are merely evidence of the endless cycle of 'redis-
coveries' of the same essential, immutable Reality that serves as the basis of all things" ("AC,"
p. 82).
43. See Gilles Deleuze, "Bergson," in Les Philosophescilibres, ed. Maurice Merleau-
Ponty (Paris, 1956), pp. 292-99.
110 Branden WJoseph Whiteon White
For his part, Cage never explicitly echoed Bergson's interest in intu-
ition, nor the typically Bergsonian emphasis on evolution and biology.
Combined as they were with his interest in Zen, Cage's borrowings were
more abstract and less strident than Bergson's Lebensphilosophie.Cage did,
however, adopt for his own purposes Bergson's idea of nature as flux in
duration, of the role of temporality in the perpetual creation of the new,
and of the interrelated functioning of intellect and memory. Like Berg-
son, Cage saw that to transcend an understanding accorded by the intel-
lect one had to turn away from the anthropocentric point of view and
identify oneself with nature or, as Cage termed it, the "outside."45In the
44. "Nevertheless the vision I now have of [an object] differs from that which I have
just had, even if only because the one is an instant older than the other" (CE, p. 2).
45. Cage refers to the nonanthropocentric point of view as the "outside" in "Morris
Graves" (1957), in John Cage, p. 126.
CriticalInquiry Autumn2000 111
until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my
death. One need not fear about the future of music.
But this fearlessness only follows if, at the parting of the ways,
where it is realized that sounds occur whether intended or not, one
turns in the direction of those he does not intend. This turning is
psychological and seems at first to be a giving up of everything that
belongs to humanity-for a musician, the giving up of music. This
psychological turning leads to the world of nature, where, gradually
or suddenly, one sees that humanity and nature, not separate, are in
this world together....("EM," p. 8).46
In this we find Cage echoing not only Bergson's ideas but also his
terms. As opposed to the Bergsonian emphasis on intuition, however,
Cage characterized the turn towards nature primarily in terms of the
avant-garde strategy of perceptual estrangement. Following Moholy-
Nagy, Cage saw the task of the artist as producing works that fostered
the direct perception of duration. In Cage's terminology, the distinction
between a conventional work of art and one that allowed for the direct
perception of temporal events became that between the work as "object"
and the work as "process."As Cage explained,
... we're no longer making objects but processes and it is easy to see
that we are not separate from processes but are in them, so that our
feelings are not about but in them. Criticism vanishes. Awareness and
use and curiosity enter into making our consciousness. We are glad
to see that we are noticing what happens. Asked what happened, we
have to say we don't know, or we could say we see more clearly but
we can't tell you what we see.47
Signaled here by the precise deployment of past and present tense, Cage
makes a distinction between intellect (predicated on the grasping of a
stable, non-temporal entity) and perception (understood as a nearly pure
perception existing within the temporal flux of the present).48 When
asked "what happened"in the past, Cage does not know; nevertheless, he is
"noticing what happens"in the present, seeing it more clearly even though
it cannot be grasped, cognized or readily communicated.
46. Cage's use of the term psychologicalin this context seems to have been derived from
Bergson. See, for example, CE, pp. 257, 298.
47. "Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?" in Silence, pp. 236-37.
48. This is somewhat contrary to Bergson's understanding of perception as linked to
the intellect. Cage is endorsing an idea akin to that which Bergson refers to as "pure percep-
tion" and which Bergson saw as a hypothetical rather than an actual state.
112 Branden WJoseph Whiteon White
No subject
No image
No taste
No object
No beauty
No message
No talent
No technique (no why)
No idea
No intention
No art
No feeling
No black
No white (no and)49
Cage then declared that, rather than being empty, these pieces were
opened to the temporally changing processes outside themselves. "After
careful consideration," he said,
To this, Cage added as a sort of postscript, "Hallelujah! The blind can see
again; the water's fine" ("RR,"p. 112). In 1961, Cage would reprint this
commentary in its entirety and elaborate on it by adding the same distinc-
tion between perception and recollection noted above. After his reitera-
tion of "Hallelujah! The blind can see again," he wrote, "Blind to what he
has seen so that seeing is as though first seeing" ("ORR,"p. 102).5o
Although Rauschenberg's terminology was never as identifiably Berg-
sonian as Cage's and lacked the composer's relation to Eastern philosophy
and religion, he did share much the same understanding of existence
and of the intellect's inevitable arresting of temporal movement. This he
49. Cage, "Robert Rauschenberg" (1953) inJohn Cage, pp. 111-12; hereafter abbrevi-
ated "RR."
50. Emphasis added. For a discussion of the historical avant-garde strategy of es-
trangement and the attempt at attaining an unmediated form of perception, see Simon
Watney, "Making Strange: The Shattered Mirror,"in ThinkingPhotography,ed. Victor Burgin
(London, 1982), pp. 154-76.
CriticalInquiry Autumn2000 113
51. Lawrence Alloway et al., "The Art of Assemblage: A Symposium" (1961), in Studies
in ModernArt, ed. James Leggio and Helen M. Franc (New York, 1992), pp. 138, 137; here-
after abbreviated "AS."
114 Branden WJoseph Whiteon White
, i
S . .;:: ?
.,
.::-.
... ...?
...
..
.: ,-::,..:...:.
4-`,::::,%s
:::::--.:-,:.-.,-:.
....:,...
. .
: ..
::: .. .
..."....:.:..::7
:?::
sg~?... .??:i
.?:
. ? ,..
' .... ..... :.'":. " ,.. , .:. '::
. ......
IX.-:
..
: : . . . .. ........
. ., .., :. ., i"..':
:.".:".. .....
M
..:" : .r.
,: .::,. : ... : ..•, . ..:. , .:"l
,
i:.: ,:."::•:.,;:.:.{1• ...-''. . .
. . - •::
:.• ••' i.:-'+•"-
:"..;"
,
,,"--
.
.:• .:
.
. . .. .:.. N
.:. . ". . .?.. • . ....?.. .?
7i.
:,, .:,,? :, :.:,.,:.'%-
s•=
..
.
-
"'I
.
-, K
.
U:::::
%
..-?'
-
1'E",
. ?:.: i:.:
.. ::1 .4i
: . .";.iYs
i•
.? • i
•
• i i: :•Q i
'II:!.!:,: v~i:•:i~ii.:.:>!i
: ..li': AMM."
M iNNOW
& .:.q4.
.....:-V.4- ?,Hf.%i
. ,
.- ~=..:i~i=%;•:•#CK`==•••;
;r":..*:'.
;::::" .. :.. I .. ..
:r:"'..'?. W'':"M
... =``;;1•••%
M:]!lAF*Waill"
'.M ? '%:,:.,.% :z: :...;
? W:l'r*iI".',
!? =<.
.,.:I"'tt{i .......1..I-
.... . ...%i
: -. -%.
..:..
?:-..:X
.::: ...-
I?;-1N.
:-.qk
:x :h.
.-M
1
. ... g6.. : ? -'- ..:, .....
, .."U.
. .P--.:V=,,?..•=
,
?• iii: : .:.?1 -;•ii •i..
i i•::i
; ~.... . . .........
: . •; : =•-..
~....
, ,.:
. ...i?::-.:.!...i7+
:• •
: , •
:;-.:,..i[i:?K:•
;.".
• • •`)
V: , W,, 7.:-''%? •....•.,, ' , .
:i• `.:. ;
,::.F'•
..:?i, .. ''sin ...
1:
.,.....I?-:, . '?
j.H
,?Zii!.N
.1 •:'. 1i,% ; •
.. i,..I
:"?::?;...
-::i:i;: . .
... -;• • ..i •N,..
• ••Q............ . .. .... - .-:.0a!r
..i ':: . .:.:...i:.,,•:i:,
" .4 X.•`••••
~~~~--...
fi•" :... :i•0~:.
" Riiii
X.-%
5••.. :... :--
.;%i.. . :
;!••
: .•:"' :
..i - .. .. : . - ...::1::iki--Ot•?f'
.. ":::
. . •.
..
. ---
i': - ••!;•
• - 1 :-i
.4.:.::..
: :: :i:4-?•::?~'
..! ...1 . ...` ...,: .. X
N.
i : i• ::t-l
?
? " ...i'.i." %::,:.:ii
1..-::. ..]~Q.::
' . .•. ;~.... ii~ .:i~i!i
"Ni .:[ i.. '...... ,- ., . •..":.;T` :` ::•T` •
- 'ili~
•+• ,::-.:. , •!:;:]:::,
.i .';•[. :. ii:.•
::•!.:.! ;. - I,:4t[
?.':!;f...:::ii:
.. N..':' i•?; ::,:: .iy,••
, , ::? : ' .. ,
,% -[•].. 1-i. :, ! .x[i•! .: ,
....iI< .... ..-.:.:
...;:-::?.xm..,xi,.
? i,, ii :: :. ",:, .? --?,. ... . ...- . . - .:-: i.:
.. -.i•.• ; :,ii . ,- ,
- g?... .i.i ii i .:.:-
:...:,. i-'i:
i .+.. "i. 1., . ,....>"-- i!iiI •! :[ Ii:..-.,-i.:: i• •I i .. .
...i:i: .N:• ::y.:-fi, ,,
? ..
. .........:
. .......
-.. - ......V.
.-. - - - -?.. .=
...:..."=%?.-'. ..".-.?
. ..............
. .: .....
11
...-.-..,.
.i
..
.... ........... :3? ..:s.:K
- . - :: .. : i.:i ,.
:-.: . . . . :X% ?: .6: . .. : :i ..e-1 N %..
::,
..:...
:..
.;. I.. ... . .1
.. .:.:
--..:. ..:.
Z.:ii.
?:? ?
rl
..!I,i-=.
..i
I
.I ! •]
. %I
• i--. i•;.,,
-? :- %-
• II. , ii=] ii.!.:.. . .
,ii;i- : ii•
6•
. -X.-
'•`, ••i+.l ==ii.:..%.
I
i• 3 I^• ,.
~
.MN -'::% a :.-
•• ;:! ! :::!?:
,! i
. .
%: ?i:
l ll l 'l :?:i,'!.
•i ,:; Iii •i,:
5,?i,I
i~~i
ii:!:,i ...... ,,i -: .! !.. :
!.i:i.
I -
.:•!.
•i{iii
%.
?:i:I[I.::'::T
,,x~i,!i ,.: -lir
:: ':x:,
iiii:-
g
..::.-1.... ?••,
'i: .
:.:!.. .:. . . ' .".:."."
in
V -
X ::,.......
:-I '11
. " ":, ..,.I: :^'. :•••
X
! '•=,::".•.::t,; ::
' i.:7.:. 1 ....11... . .-1. .. . - .. 1
, .•"..• . ;,.'.- . %1-,.'.:, ...•
i:,'. " : i...
• :`. ,""
."p•i:
. ;..4::.'.
.;!: ...I,,'!, r,4;'..
aZ ::." ??c. ....-.
??s: ..". : l
•::iI ) i!• • •ii. --"! i.%Ui
...:I ...."I
: . . ' . ... '..
.S.'
.:.....?f.-o
...I.-.-
"!..%......
?t..
.,?......
.:?:
Z...
=
. ?...,..
.
:.::.-"i '??,r4
...
....I..,. .
"i : ..?::
,," F .....
-....
::..
. ..- .ii~ ..
.1 .., .ii. ......:
-'."N
.. . -. . . ::• , .4......-
....?. .. .- . -... =,:::",•t
.Z:..
' ":"
. 4?%
,::eN-:!-.:J:-.:
: .•. . •?
:, .f ,• .1 U •*
..?!%!!;
i;? N.4
.-4:
•• .Zi.i
?.:I ?? -..
•
"r.
• .
.4 -
:! :::.
?
o..;:,
.. . ? .
?•
:...
.:-f':i~~i•;•
.... .: :';'
i:%]i::;!:,i
.
~
Y i.(•I
:1
X. .::
i: . .::i :.i ... -.
- :::-:::
- .4N::
....?.:
:.- . .'.
:..: , .::..'... m ....
:1 ..!,.l'.. :..;T:, ' .-.",
?~ ... • • .. : ?' ... .:..... t
:.'.... " ...
:..: .....:x:•: ..::: I-I.... ."".-.................
- t. . ?. " . - I
. .;):-.:; . .{,!i.•.i~::.
.> :.is -.:: .
%,..:;......,
": . :".I- ..s:.'.? .::
i'i - : ..'KI -.::.i
,::l.. :" :: .
". 4::.;:;:im.:•!l
".": .....F::.;":MY?
.4
• •
` :..
:
.:i"i•
i
;:..
.
:..
...... ......
.
Is
•,;•::.:. ;::
..:...??"
.
. . . . . . . .
.
....
.
. . .
52. "The implications were so blatantly Freudian, the act itself so obviously a symbolic
(if good-natured) patricide" (quoted in Tomkins, Off the Wall, p. 96).
53. Maxime de la Falaise McKendry, "Robert Rauschenberg Talks to Maxime de la
Falaise McKendry,"Interview6 (May 1976): 36. See also Tomkins, TheBrideand the Bachelors;
Five Mastersof the Avant-Garde(New York, 1968, 1970), pp. 210-11.
CriticalInquiry Autumn2000 115
57. Cage, "[Letter to Paul Henry Lang]" (1956), in John Cage, pp. 117-18.
CriticalInquiry Autumn2000 117
ition that we have of mind when we draw aside the veil which is inter-
posed between our consciousness and ourselves. This, also, is what
our intellect and senses themselves would show us of matter, if they
could obtain a direct and disinterested idea of it. [CE, pp. 296-97]
People keep shuffling up to the picture with everything that has hap-
pened to them, and they turn to their neighbor and tell them that
this is what the picture is about. But any two people and any one
painting would show that that couldn't possibly be the same reaction
every time. ["AS,"p. 138]60
58. Bergson's discussion of memory is found in Matterand Memory,trans. N. M. Paul
and W. S. Palmer (New York, 1991). It is, however, also summarized at the beginning of CE,
pp. 3-4.
59. See Bergson's description of observing a motionless object, CE, p. 2.
60. Once again, this idea is profoundly resonant with ideas found in the thinking of
Bergson. See CE, p. 5.
118 Branden WJoseph Whiteon White
but difference seen from its underside, seen from below. Seen the
right way up, from top to bottom, difference is affirmation. This
proposition, however, means many things: that difference is an object
of affirmation; that affirmation itself is multiple; that it is creation
but also that it must be created, as affirming difference, as being
difference in itself. [DR, p. 55]
Klein's remarks on his monochromes seem almost to parody the form of individual recep-
tion advocated by Rauchenberg and Cage.
63. Todd May, The Political Philosophyof PoststructuralistAnarchism (University Park,
Penn., 1994), p. 48.
64. Gilles Deleuze, Differenceand Repetition,trans. Paul Patton (New York, 1994), p. 56;
hereafter abbreviated DR.
120 BrandenWJoseph Whiteon White
discussion of object versus process. "If, at this point," Cage further ex-
plained about his revelation within the anechoic chamber, "one says, 'Yes!
I do not discriminate between intention and non-intention,' the splits,
subject-object, art-life, etc., disappear, an identification has been made
with the material, and actions are then those relevant to its nature"
("EMD,"p. 14).66
Beginning in the summer of 1952, the goal of the neo-avant-garde
paradigm opened up by Cage and Rauschenberg would be two fold. On
the one hand, it would affirm the positive conception of difference that
the WhitePaintings had rather passively opened up; on the other, it would
develop a means of utilizing imagery and sound while maintaining an
anarchistically liberated form of aesthetic reception, one that kept open
the possibility of a politics of difference.
66. At this point, one can see a potential danger in Cage's position: by starting from
the point of view of an infinitely differentiating field of forces, one runs the risk of ending
up with what is essentially a situation of nondifferentiation. Cage seems to have oscillated
somewhat on the point of whether the "natural" multiplicity was a holism or not. See, for
example, Cage's comments in "Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?" in Silence,
pp. 248-50; and in "Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)
Continued 1966," A Yearfrom Monday, p. 67. Deriving as Cage's position does from a Berg-
sonian perspective, Deleuze's discussion of the question of monism and pluralism in Berg-
son is apposite. See Deleuze, Bergsonism,trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam
(New York, 1988), pp. 73-89.