I see something I hadn’t noticed before. This is also the case for me with the work of Mark Tobey, which I loved very much; so that these, in a sense, are my response to the work of Mark Tobey. In another sense, all of my work is a response to the work of Mark Tobey.


Joan Retallack (ed.), Musicage - Cage Muses - On Words, Art, Music, Wesleyan University Press, Hanover/London 1996

And yet I had learned from Tobey himself, and then from his painting, that every place that you look is the same thing. You don’t really need the Tobey. (laughs) But you need it to tell you that, I guess. (p. 54)

Art in their <= Dada-artists except of  Duchamp> cases became seperate from life. In the case of Duchamp and Tobey they became identical with life. (p. 101)

Whereas, if it transfers you - as Duchamp did for me - to something ordinary - and Tobey did the same thing, and so does the Warhol - then it’s not as though it were a case of the „special“, but it enlarges the spiritual experience to include many, many things. (p. 106)

I’ve had another influence than Duchamp. And I don’t think there were any chance operations in his work. It’s the influence of Mark Tobey. I’ve kept that work of Tobey’s that’s down at the end of the room as a kind of North Star - isn’t that the guiding star? - in my mind <Untitled, 1961>. I’ve tried to find my way with that work of Tobey. And I don’t think he used chance operations. But he was constantly finding things that were beyond his control, I think. (p. 126)

Well, did I never tell you the story of what he did when people came to him to learn how to paint? They wanted to become modern artists, you know, under his influence. He’d make a still life on a small table and the students would be seated around. He would have them look at it until they had memorized it, so that they could close their eyes and see it, hmm? Then he asked them to go to the wall - and on the wall he had hung paper, wrapping paper - and to take charcoal. They were to put their nose against the wall and