Day Six from Seven Day Diary (Not Knowing)
1978
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
color etching, drypoint, softground etching, sugarlift aquatint, photo-etching, impressions from inked found objects, and color etching from a portfolio of seven etchings and drypoints on wove Rives paper
Dimensions
plate: 18.3 x 14.6 cm (7 3/16 x 5 3/4 in.) sheet: 30.5 x 43.2 cm (12 x 17 in.)
Classification
Portfolio
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Kathan Brown
Accession Number
1996.93.26.6
Art Historical Context
John Cage's *Day Six from Seven Day (Not Knowing)* (1978) is a captivating print from a portfolio of seven etchings and drypoints, reflecting the composer's pioneering embrace of chance and unpredictability in visual art., renowned for his experimental music and philosophy of indeterminacy—inspired by Zen Buddhism and the I Ching— these ideas to printmaking in the late 1970s. Created at Crown Point Press under the guidance of founder Kathan Brown (whose gift brought it to the National Gallery of Art), this work embodies Cage's "not knowing," where artistic control yields to serendipity. The i...
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...