Jonathan Griffin

Criticism and essays on art and culture

Category: Active Cultures

December 17, 2020

John Cage

Cage Foraging in Grenoble, France, 1971. 
Photograph by James Klosty.
1.

In 1959, composer John Cage appeared on the popular Italian TV game show Lascia o Raddoppia? (Double or Nothing?). Specialist subject: mushroom identification. Cage was in Milan as the guest of fellow avant-garde composer Luciano Berio, and was performing a series of concerts. Berio was at that time working for Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI), the state media channel that included, improbably, an “experimental studio for audio research.” Others in Berio’s circle, including writer Umberto Eco and sound engineer Marino Zuccheri, also worked with RAI, and together the cohort had finagled Cage a spot on the show. 

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October 28, 2020

We Called Her General Girouard

Video still, Food, 1972, Gordon Matta-Clark, © Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

An ad, printed in the Spring 1972 issue of Avalanche magazine, trumpeted in boldface type ‘FOOD’S FISCAL FAMILY FACTS’. Most of the readers of Avalanche would, it was assumed, be at least part way familiar with FOOD, the restaurant opened in SoHo by artists Gordon Matta-Clark, Carol Goodden, Tina Girouard, Suzanne Harris, and Rachel Lew a few months earlier. It was already a fabulous success, and the Downtown art scene was tight knit in those days and more or less identical to Avalanche’s readership. Also, FOOD was the only decent restaurant in the neighborhood. 

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