- Venue
- Baltic
- Location
Chance- a creative cop out or an artistic achievement?
The exhibition at Gateshead’s Baltic, shows that there is more to using chance in art than flipping a coin and relying on luck. The exhibition- conceived by artist Jeremy Millar, ‘Every Day is a Good Day’, presents to the public over 100 works on paper from the artist and composer John Cage.
Each of Cage’s pieces is individually titled in a leaflet (which can be picked up in the gallery). As the pieces are moved during the duration of the exhibition using a computerised version of the Chinese oracle ‘I Ching’- that Cage himself, used to create his work- they cannot be titled in situ. It is explained in a second exhibition leaflet, that Cage disliked linear displays and described one of his own exhibitions, which used the same chance curation methods- ‘Rolywholyover A Circus’, as a, ‘composition for museum.’ [1] The Baltic also displays some of Cage’s musical compositions, played through headphones on the other side of the gallery wall. The sporadic, high and low notes and silences in Cage’s music arrangements mimic the placing of his paper pieces- some high up, others low down etc; the gallery walls could be read like a musical score.
I must- embarrassingly- admit that I do not remember any of Cage’s individual pieces in great detail. Some of his work, from the series titled ‘Ryoanji’, art critic David Sylvester describes as ‘among the most beautiful prints and drawings made anywhere in the 1980s.’ [2] but for me, the exhibition was about something much more than displaying art in a gallery space.
The use of chance in art could be thought of as an easy way to relinquish responsibility. To simply say that fate chose the outcome of a piece and that you (the artist) had no control over its outcome, would leave little room for someone to criticise the artist or the work itself. On the other hand, chance could be seen as a brave process. To let fate decide the outcome of a piece means that you are leaving the work’s final aesthetics entirely down to luck. The temptation to go against the decision of the chance method, to make something YOUR way instead, would be big. To make a piece of work that you, yourself, may not choose to make, completely opposes the majority of contemporary artist’s creative thinking.
John Cage explained that the ‘real art’ and the correct way to use chance methods is in asking the right questions, ‘The principle underlying of the results of those chosen operations is in the questions.’ [3] (John Cage).
Chance creates answers we may not even know existed. Unlike an artist, chance doesn’t care what a critic might think, or lose it’s nerve to exhibit. It leaves out judgements made by emotions that give an artist much more freedom to create something original. John Cage’s paintings, in my opinion, are not particularly eye catching but the exhibition idea as a whole; the process and thought behind the work; and the almost completely handing over art to fate- but not quite; is mind expanding.
[1] BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art: 19th June –5th September 2010: Every Day is a Good Day: Baltic Gateshead
[2] Baltic: Present Exhibitions: http://www.balticmill.com/whatsOn/present/ExhibitionDetail.php?exhibID=142
[3] James Pritchett: Writings on Cage (& others): Introduction to The music of John Cage:Copyright 1993
