“Making Cage Pop: Charlotte Moorman and John Cage’s 24’ 1.1499”
The Frick/IFA Symposium on the History of Art, April 2015
In this talk, I consider Charlotte Moorman's unique interpretation of John Cage’s aleatory and open-scored work, 26’ 1.1.499” for a String Player (1955), which evolved over two decades from a sparse string composition into an intricate, theatrical quasi-vaudevillian performance. I compare Cage’s enthusiastic endorsement of his friend and aesthetic accomplice, Robert Rauschenberg, to his derisive response to Moorman’s interpretation of his score, despite their employing similar strategies in their engagements with popular culture.