148 upvotes, 4 direct replies (showing 4)
View submission: John Cage 4’33
I wouldn't say "gimmicky and pretentious"; what Cage was going against (well, that's part of it anyway) was the pretentiousness of classical concert audiences: challenging the fact that you had to listen to music in complete silence in order to honor the music. Music doesn't care. There's also the fact that Cage had a sense of humor. It's a really fun piece.
Comment by rimshot101 at 02/02/2025 at 17:22 UTC
27 upvotes, 1 direct replies
It's the kind of thing one artist can do once. And he did.
Comment by ecmcn at 03/02/2025 at 01:12 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Reminds me of Tom Friedman’s art piece “1000 Hours of Staring”, where he hung up a big blank piece of paper and stared at it. I get why people would think it’s ridiculous, but when you look at the thing in a gallery you realize a “blank” piece of paper actually has a lot going on, with tons of variations and imperfections, and the whole time I’m thinking about whether he noticed this little dot or that wrinkle, and the patience of doing that for 1000 hours. I really liked the piece.
Comment by Echo127 at 02/02/2025 at 14:46 UTC
-43 upvotes, 5 direct replies
IMO it's pretentious in the exact same way that taping a banana to a wall and calling it art is pretentious. It's taking something that is obviously not art, and then saying "now it is art because I say so."
Comment by Aegis_gru at 02/02/2025 at 17:41 UTC*
-4 upvotes, 2 direct replies
And then he tried to have a copyright on it and go after artists who used silence on their tracks.
The reddit circlejerk will downvote facts now lol.
songwriter Mike Batt settled a copyright infringement lawsuit with the John Cage estate in 2002 over 4'33.