Paul Williams: The Cage Mix

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-140
Author(s):  
MARK DAVENPORT
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Magnetic Tape ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
Black Mountain College ◽  
Influential Book ◽  
First Time ◽  
Black Mountain

AbstractDemystifying a largely misunderstood chapter in John Cage's biographical narrative, this article explores the pivotal role architect and philanthropist Paul Williams played in Cage's life, and for whom Cage named his famous magnetic tape composition Williams Mix (1952–53). Retracing the activities of both men, beginning with their earliest encounter at the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1948, this investigation documents for the first time the extent of their mutually devoted relationship. Newly uncovered source material and photographs also reveal the valuable contributions Williams made as primary benefactor and mastermind of the intentional community called the Gatehill Cooperative (a.k.a. “Stony Point”), a place Cage called home for seventeen years (1954–71). There Cage developed a “hunger for nature,” wrote his widely read and influential book Silence (1961), and undertook some of his most significant musical projects.

Just Miles Away but Worlds Apart: Examining Jewish Participation in Integration Programs at Black Mountain College and Highlander Folk School, 1933–1964

AJS Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-233
Author(s):  
Wendy F. Soltz
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Students ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Historically White ◽  
Black Mountain College ◽  
White Schools ◽  
Highlander Folk School ◽  
Black Mountain

Small liberal arts and folk schools attempted desegregation decades before other southern colleges and universities. Historians have long argued that Jews were active and influential in the fight for civil rights in the South in the 1950s and 1960s, but were Jews involved in these early attempts to enroll black students in historically white schools? If they were, were they successful and how did their Jewishness affect the efficacy of their attempts? In order to answer these questions, this article compares and contrasts two such schools, Black Mountain College in North Carolina and Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, which established “integration programs” in the 1940s. This research reveals that when Jews saturated a school, and were visibly involved in desegregation, their attempts to desegregate the institution were ultimately unsuccessful. When Jews supported a school through donations behind the scenes and occasional visits, however, the institution successfully desegregated.

Bohemian South

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
New South ◽  
First Century ◽  
The South ◽  
Black Mountain College ◽  
Research Triangle ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Black Mountain ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

From the southern influence on nineteenth-century New York to the musical legacy of late-twentieth-century Athens, Georgia, to the cutting-edge cuisines of twenty-first-century Asheville, North Carolina, the bohemian South has long contested traditional views of the region. Yet, even as the fruits of this creative South have famously been celebrated, exported, and expropriated, the region long was labeled a cultural backwater. This timely and illuminating collection uses bohemia as a novel lens for reconsidering more traditional views of the South. Exploring wide-ranging locales, such as Athens, Austin, Black Mountain College, Knoxville, Memphis, New Orleans, and North Carolina’s Research Triangle, each essay challenges popular interpretations of the South, while highlighting important bohemian sub- and countercultures. The Bohemian South provides an important perspective in the New South as an epicenter for progress, innovation, and experimentation.

Rauschenberg, Robert (1925–2008)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Wallis
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Kansas City ◽  
Pop Art ◽  
John Cage ◽  
Black Mountain College ◽  
Robert Rauschenberg ◽  
American Artist ◽  
Experimental Approaches ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Black Mountain

Robert Rauschenberg (Milton Ernest Rauschenberg) was an American artist who pioneered new approaches to art prototypical of the Pop Art movement and postmodernism. Born October 22, 1925 in Port Arthur, Texas, Rauschenberg attended the Kansas City Art Institute and the Académie Julien in Paris. From 1948–1952, while attending sessions at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, Rauschenberg studied under the Bauhaus painter Josef Albers and the musical composer John Cage, both of whom became important influences. The experimental approaches encouraged at Black Mountain College informed Rauschenberg’s artistic philosophy and broadened his practice to include dance-theatre and performance.

Jonathan Williams

2020 ◽  
pp. 279-281
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Folk Art ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Blue Ridge ◽  
Black Mountain College ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Blue Ridge Mountains ◽  
Black Mountain

Poet and publisher Jonathan Williams was born in Asheville, North Carolina. He studied at the experimental Black Mountain College, located near Asheville, as well as at Princeton University and the Chicago School of Design. As an adult, Williams and his partner, Thomas Meyer, divided their time between North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains and England. In addition to writing poetry, Williams founded the Jargon Society in 1951. Jargon published avant-garde poetry and fiction, photography, and folk art....

Albers, Josef (1888–1976)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Saletnik
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
The United States ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Black Mountain College ◽  
Optical Effects ◽  
Important Publication ◽  
Color Value ◽  
Black Mountain

A student, and later instructor, at the Bauhaus, Josef Albers introduced aspects of the German design school’s curriculum to the United States upon his emigration from Germany in 1933. Although he designed furnishings, worked in stained and etched glass, and made prints, Albers is known particularly for his "Homage to the Square" series of paintings of which he completed several hundred beginning in 1950. In these, three or four painted squares of different hue, color value, and saturation are nested within one another, thereby creating various optical effects as one square appears to float above another or as color differentiation is neutralized. How the chromic context in which any one color is situated contributes to its relative appearance also corresponded to Albers’s teaching of the topic and the important publication Interaction of Color in 1963. Albers taught at Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina, between 1933 and 1949, and at Yale University from 1950 until 1958.

A Community Far Afield

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Horne Carter
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
John Cage ◽  
Black Mountain College ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Experimental College ◽  
Buckminster Fuller ◽  
Art Community ◽  
Black Mountain

This chapter examines Black Mountain College, an experimental college of exiles—cultural, political, and social, who created a utopian Appalachian avant-garde art community that emerged in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1933. The author examines the history, social ecosystem and legacy if this innovative and short-lived college that played host to the likes of R. Buckminster Fuller and John Cage.

Black Mountain, Provincetown, and the Woman Paintings

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Curtis
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Real Life ◽  
John Cage ◽  
Black Mountain College ◽  
Merce Cunningham ◽  
Willem De Kooning ◽  
Female Figures ◽  
Summer Session ◽  
Erik Satie ◽  
Black Mountain

In 1948, Willem de Kooning taught at the Black Mountain College summer session in Asheville, North Carolina. Elaine thrived in this experimental ambience. She worked on Buckminster Fuller’s first geodesic dome, studied with Josef Albers, and played the ingénue in The Ruse of Medusa, choreographed by Merce Cunningham, with music by Erik Satie played by John Cage. While Bill labored over his breakthrough painting Asheville, Elaine produced rhythmic abstractions on wrapping paper. That fall, he painted Woman, the first of his grotesque female figures. It is impossible to fully parse the real-life and artistic influences that led to these paintings, but his deepening rift with Elaine was surely among them. The following summer, in Provincetown, Massachusetts, she studied with Hans Hofmann and socialized with friends. One of her self-portraits was included in a group exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery that fall; portraiture would change the course of her creative

scholarly journals Fitness of Isolates of Phytophthora capsici Resistant to Mefenoxam from Squash and Pepper Fields in North Carolina

Plant Disease ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 92 (10) ◽  
pp. 1439-1443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adalberto C. Café-Filho ◽  
Jean Beagle Ristaino
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Phytophthora Capsici ◽  
Colony Growth ◽  
Relative Fitness ◽  
In Planta ◽  
Phytophthora Blight ◽  
In Vivo Experiments ◽  
First Time

Despite the wide adoption of mefenoxam (Ridomil Gold EC) for vegetables in North Carolina, the incidence of Phytophthora blight on pepper (Capsicum annuum) and squash (Cucurbita pepo) is high. Seventy-five isolates of Phytophthora capsici were collected in five pepper and one squash field in order to assess mefenoxam sensitivity. The relative fitness of resistant and sensitive isolates was contrasted in vitro by their respective rates of colony growth and their ability to produce sporangia in unamended V8 juice agar medium. In in vivo experiments, the aggressiveness of isolates on pepper was evaluated. The frequency of resistant isolates in North Carolina populations was 63%, considerably higher than resistance levels in areas where mefenoxam is not widely adopted. Resistant isolates grew on amended media at rates >80 to 90% and >100% of the nonamended control at 100 μg ml-1 and 5 μg ml-1, respectively. Sensitive isolates did not growth at 5 or 100 μg ml-1. All isolates from three fields, including two pepper and a squash field, were resistant to mefenoxam. Populations from other fields were composed of either mixes of sensitive and resistant isolates or only sensitive isolates. Response to mefenoxam remained stable during the course of in vitro and in planta experiments. Occurrence of a mefenoxam-resistant population of P. capsici on squash is reported here for the first time in North Carolina. When measured by rate of colony growth, sporulation in vitro, or aggressiveness in planta, fitness of resistant isolates was not reduced. Mefenoxam-resistant isolates from squash were as aggressive on pepper as sensitive or resistant pepper isolates. These results suggest that mefenoxam-resistant populations of P. capsici are as virulent and fit as sensitive populations.

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