Process Blog: John Cage, Peggy Guggenheim & The Club

There comes a point during this project, when I need to stop researching and begin piecing together everything that I have found. I have spent the past two months parsing through books, interviews, video clips, films and various sources in an attempt to understand what was going on in lower Manhattan during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s that allowed for a cultural hothouse to emerge. Who were the key players? Who came before George Maciunas? At this point, John Cage seems to be the missing link in my project. John Cage has been mentioned in nearly every source I have come across. He was a seminal composer of the late twentieth century; he made visual art, wrote literature and philosophy and collaborated on theater and modern dance (Pearlman 31). Cage was eventually led to teach an experimental composition course during the fall of 1956 at the New School for Social Research.
At the New School Cage taught George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen, Florence Tarlow, Jackosn Mac Low, Scott Hyde, Richard Maxfield, La Monte Young and Fluxus founder George Maciunas. Cage’s experimental composition class was the leading influence behind George Maciunas’ Fluxus art movement. Cage not only had a strong a relationship to Fluxus, but early on he also developed a relationship with Peggy Guggenheim, Andre Breton, Piet Mondrian, Gypsy Rose Lee, Joseph Cornell, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Marcel Duchamp beginning in the 1940s.
“It seemed to me she was like an open sesame. She was full of plans . . . It was very exciting. I came from the west and had read about all these people and here I was seeing the people I had read about. It was an astonishing moment. Peggy had the keys to the whole art world. Even though, there was something unattractive [about her], one forgot that in the brilliance of everything else. She was lively and fun.” –John Cage in regards to Peggy Gugeneheim (Larson 96-97)
“It was a marvelous place to land because it was not only New York which I think, when one first comes to it, is extremely stimulating, but it was the whole gamut of the world of painting. Through circumstances in Europe, many painters were living here in New York – Mondrian was here for instance, and Breton was here; and so in one fell swoop or a series of evenings at Peggy Guggenheim’s you met an entire world of both American and European artist. She was already involved with Jackson Pollock, and Joseph Cornell was a frequent visitor. Marcel Duchamp was there all the time, and I even met [Peggy’s neighbor] Gypsy Rose lee. It was absolutely astonishing to be in that situation.” –John Cage in regards to Peggy Guggeneheim (Larson 97)
At ease with artists, Cage quickly got to know the key players in the generation soon to cohere as the New York School, argues writer Kay Larson in “Where the Heart Beats” (Larson 97). The New York School was an informal group of poets, painters, dancers and musicians during the 1950s in New York who drew inspiration from Surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde movements. Unlike artists from the School of Paris, who were enchanted by the aroma of their ancient city, the New York artists lacked “the ephemeral influence what binds responses together beyond the antagonism of minds”, argues Dore Ashton in “The New York School” (Ashton 1). According to composer, Morton Feldman, “There were both bohemians (or loft rate) and Right Bank guys. I was aware I was involved in a movement of some kind which was not just the Club. Personalities didn’t seem to change the fact that there was a movement going on” (Ashton 1). The Club was a group of artists who recognized the value in establishing a sense of importance of the artists in America (Ashton 196). The group of artist were interested in forging a rhetoric and in finding a philosophy that could reflect their own experience. Those artists included, David Hare, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, William Baziotes, Willem de Kooning, ad Reinhardt, and Harold Rosenberg. 1948, Baziotes, Hare, Motherwell and Rothko planned their art school at 35 East Eighth Street, which they called “The Subjects of the Artist”. Motherwell and Newman made sure the lectures were extremely broad in scope and were often derived from literature (Ashton 198). When the studio was taken over the following year by some professors at New York University, the Friday night class continued and intellectuals such as Hannah Arendt, Richard Huelsenaback, John Cage and Harold Rosenberg began attending (Ashton 198). The Club had its first meeting in the fall of 1948 with twelve members. Artists would come after spending the whole day in their studios alone, seeking each other’s company. Cage was never a member of the Club, but he had allies in it.
Understanding the role that Cage played in the Club and in Fluxus is crucial for the development of my project. Cage appears to be the bridge between the two movements/groups. Investigating the relationship between the artists associated with the Club versus the artists associated with Fluxus will also add depth to my overall project. My next step will be to further investigate the artists associated with the New York School, in addition to figuring out who else bridged the two worlds together.