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Home>Yes No Maybe Introduction>Yes No Maybe Cage Introduction>Yes No Maybe Cage 17 Drawings

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Exhibition Introduction

Note to the ReaderAcknowledgments

IntroductionKeithJohnLeslieSelf-Portrait

IntroductionTouched RedGreenCombinationHigh Green Version 1

Introduction17 Drawings by ThoreauSeven Day Diary (Not Knowing)Changes and DisappearancesWhere R=RyoanjiFireThe Missing Stone 75 StonesEninkaStonesWhere There is Where There

IntroductionAnne ApplebyPia FriesDarren AlmondSusan MiddletonJoel FisherBrad BrownTom Marioni

IntroductionMamma AnderssonSol LeWittFred WilsonRobert BechtleKiki Smith

IntroductionJulie MehretuWayne ThiebaudJockum NordströmTomma AbtsNathan OliveiraChris Ofili

IntroductionPat SteirLaura OwensWayne ThiebaudAmy Sillman

# John Cage, 17 Drawings by Thoreau, 1978

John Cage, 17 Drawings by Thoreau, 1978
*17 Drawings by Thoreau*1978uniquely inked color photo-etching on Japanese paperplate: 21 15⁄16 × 28 (55.7 × 71.1)sheet: 24 1⁄2 × 36 1⁄2 (62.2 × 92.7)National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Kathan Brown,1996© John Cage Trust

John Cage, 17 Drawings by Thoreau, 1978
Master score for *17 Drawings by Thoreau*, 1978,indicating the selection, position, scale, andorientation of each of Thoreau’s drawings, penand pencil on paper1978Kathan Brown© John Cage Trust

 

John Cage, 17 Drawings by Thoreau, 1978
Scores for *17 Drawings by Thoreau*, 1978, includingcolor score for the impression exhibited in*Yes, No, Maybe: Artists Working at Crown Point Press*1978Kathan Brown© John Cage Trust

Cage arrived****at Crown Point in January 1978 with the “sense that I was not an artist, that I couldn’t draw...really...anything.” For his first print project, he found source material in the small ink drawings of natural phenomena in the poet-philosopher Henry David Thoreau’s journals. The selection (hawk feather, hazelnut, rabbit tracks, and so on), position, orientation, scale, and color of the drawings were calculated by what Cage called chance operations. Despite his initial misgivings, Cage later acknowledged that his composition had aesthetically transformed Thoreau’s empirical drawings and they “became beautiful.”

John Cage examining a proof of *17 Drawings by Thoreau*at Crown Point Press, 1978. Still image from *John Cage at Work, 1978–1992,* a film in four parts by Kathan Brown, 2013, Courtesy Crown Point Press

Banner image: Detail, John Cage,* Eninka 29*, 1986, burned, smoked, and branded *gampi *mounted to paper, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Crown Point Press, 1996, © John Cage Trust

Next: John Cage, *Seven Day Diary (Not Knowing)*, 1978

"Yes, No, Maybe: The Art of Making Decisions," lecture by exhibition curators Judith Brodie and Adam Greenhalgh (audio)Julie Mehretu, artist, in conversation with curator Judith Brodie, Diamonstein-Spielvogel lecture (audio)"An Insider's Perspective," lecture by Kathan Brown, founder of Crown Point Press (audio)

Exhibition tour by curators Judith Brodie and Adam Greenhalgh (audio)

John Cage in the collection of the National Gallery of Art

Crown Point Press prints in the collection of the National Gallery of Art

Press release

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