75 Stones
1989
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
color spitbite aquatint and sugarlift aquatint on smoked Somerset Textured White paper
Dimensions
plate: 121 x 89.2 cm (47 5/8 x 35 1/8 in.) sheet: 137.5 x 104.1 cm (54 1/8 x 41 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Kathan Brown
Accession Number
1996.93.66
Art Historical Context
**75 Stones**, created by avant-garde composer and artist John Cage in 1989, exemplifies his pioneering embrace of chance operations in visual art. Cage, renowned for revolutionizing music through indeterminacy—think of his silent *4'33"*—extended these ideas to printmaking later in life. This large-scale color print (plate: 47 5/8 x 35 1/8 in.) was produced in collaboration with master printer Kathan Brown at Crown Point Press, whose brought it to the National Gallery Art. The medium—spitbite aquatint and sugarlift aquatint on smoked Somerset Textured White paper—highlights innovative etchin...
About the Artist
John Cage
John Cage (1912–1992), born in Los Angeles to inventor John Milton Cage Sr. and journalist Lucretia "Crete" Harvey, an amateur artist, initially explored painting during travels in Europe in 1930 but soon pivoted to music. His early visual pursuits were sparsely documented, yielding no surviving works, as feedback favored his compositions. He married artist Xenia Andreyevna Kashevaroff, a bookbind...