> Given that, my take is that Cage was doing
something similar to what the color-field painter Ad Reinhardt was
doing: making a work from a single element. Now Reinhardt's paintings
weren't absolutely of a single color: there are slight variations in
the overall field of reds, blues, or blacks he used that makes the
paintings seem to shimmer or breathe (and even makes people who sneer
"My kid could do that"?when, of course, their kids have nothing
approaching Reinhardt's command of color?stare deeply into those
paintings.)
There's a fair amount of art that simply can't be appreciated in reproduction.
Seeing some of Reinhardt's paintings in person changed me from a scoffer to an appreciative audience--same thing with Pollock. It's like going to a hardcore show or an opera performance--wonderful--versus listening to a hardcore record or an opera record--intensely boring. Attending the Yoko Ono exhibition was like that, too--actually participating in the work changed my perception of it (though I was inclined to like her stuff already).
Does that resist the commodification of art, to make a piece which can't be reproduced and manufactured like a product? Or does it simply make the original piece a hotter commodity?