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that inspired
".
During the performance Cage, dressed in black
tie, gave readings from a text about music and Zen, and from the
writings of the mediaeval mystic Meister Eckhart, followed by a
'composition with a radio'. While this went on Rauschenberg played
old records on a wind-up gramophone while David Tudor played
a prepared piano, and, later, poured water from one bucket to
another and back again, accompanied by Charles Olson and Mary
Caroline Richards reading poetry. Jay Watt played exotic musical
instruments, Cunningham and others danced through the aisles,
while Rauschenberg projected slides of coloured gelatine and films
of the school cook and the setting sun.
8
This performance was judged a success, by Cage and his collabo-
rators at least, and news of it spread to New York, where a lively
experimental arts scene was developing. Four years later, on the
course Cage taught at the New School for Social Research in New
York, it was a focus of intense discussion. Among the poets, artists,
filmmakers and musicians attending were Allan Kaprow, Jackson
Mac Low, George Brecht, Al Hansen and Dick Higgins. Kaprow was
one of the first to take the possibilities of performance, inspired by
Cage's ideas and work, into the public arena, with his
4
'
33
18
Happenings
in
, in which the spectators became part of a per-
formance taking place in a converted loft. This was the first of
many such events put together by Kaprow and others, which
looked further at the possibilities of performance and installation, or
'Happenings' as they were called, following Kaprow's lead. Kaprow's
pioneering work, along with that of Cage, of Jackson Pollock, whose
theatricality in making art was a crucial influence, and, in other
parts of the world, that of artists such as the Japanese Gutai Group
and European artists such as Piero Manzoni, Yves Klein and Georges
Mathieu, inspired many artists to engage with these issues and to
explore their possibilities in art practice.
Performance Art's heyday was from the late
6
Parts
of
1959
1950
s to the late
1970
s and its history encompasses the work of numerous disparate
