Art as life; Ellsworth Snyder is closely associated with the Fluxus movement of the 1960s, a period which emphasized happenings, performances, and anti-commercialism; “antiart” art. Furthermore, he owned a considerable amount of ephemera and multiples from the movement. He was known as the leading authority on John Cage’s compositions1, who wrote music for Snyder and frequently sought both scholarly and pianist advice2. snyder, a protégé of Cage, is well known for his musical performances and happenings of Cage’s work, and like his mentor, would deconstruct and reconstruct the piano in order to create different sounds from the instrument. Their experiments with contemporary music were a precursor to minimal/transcendental/electronic music, which strives to take the listener through a journey of time and/or landscapes3. The experience of sensation, akin to the vibrational effect music has on one’s body, throughout snyder’s and Cage’s works on paper stroke. The artist’s minimalist & expressive aesthetic works on paper range in media from acrylic paint, charcoal, oils, and pastels, to watercolors, as well as mixed media. His works are deceptively simple; they are based on the process of chance, which happens unpredictably either by human intervention or an exterior cause, which is one of the principles of the Fluxus movement for creating art4. Fluxus artists, such as Cage and snyder, preferred simplicity to complexity aesthetically, which is evident throughout snyder’s works on paper; Meaning can be found within the gesture of his line and “the silence of the paper”5. French philosopher Gilles Deleuze talks about lines of moving, evolving, shifting, which includes jumps, voids, and immobilizations within its process of becoming6. In this sense, desire can be attributed to the idea of chance, since it is desire that never needs interpreting to become, experimentation leads to creation. The use of stones, dice, different media, the play of positive and negative space, as well as experimenting with the surface itself- these are elements of chance that snyder incorporated within his method of expression.
1
remembering-ellsworth-snyder.php. 2
www.artnet.com/Galleries/Exhibitions.asp?grid=915&cid=124993. 3
watch?v=1UPIYnBFr10&feature=related. 4
projects/artists/snyder.html. 5 “ellsworth snyder & John Cage.” 6