On John Cage

Where the Heart Beats

John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists

A “heroic” biography of John Cage and his “awakening through Zen Buddhism”—“a kind of love story” about a brilliant American pioneer of the creative arts who transformed himself and his culture. (The New York Times)

Zen Buddhism saved John Cage from himself and inspired Cage’s most radical works — including 4’33”, four minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Cage initiated an intellectual, creative, and spiritual revolution that has leaped beyond him to transform the arts over the last half century.

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Cage Was Not Only All Ears,
He Was All Eyes, Too

February 4, 2001 – New York Times Arts & Architecture Section

In the 1950s, the New York art scene was a floating world in which ideas and friendships and the freedom to invent oneself mixed in oceanic fluidity. Nobody was famous. No boundaries seemed to exist between disciplines. Artists and composers found themselves on an equal footing.

John Cage left an exceptional trail as a composer, yet many of his richest and most significant friendships were with visual artists; this was significant not only for Cage but for the American arts. The revolution he helped foment forms the inspiration for a three-year concert, film and lecture series that begins this weekend at Weill Recital Hall, with music by Cage, his friends Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and Christian Wolff, and panel discussions and tours centered on the artists — chief among them Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns — who were their fellow travelers and co-conspirators.

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