© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / courtesy the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
1962
Lantern Extract/An Aspect of Yam Festival
George Brecht, American, 1926 - 2008
© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / courtesy the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
1962
Lantern Extract/An Aspect of Yam Festival
George Brecht, American, 1926 - 2008
George Brecht, American, 1926 - 2008

Lantern Extract/An Aspect of Yam Festival, 1962

Printed mailed envelope and 10 out of an original 24 event cards
10.5 x 24.5 cm. (4 1/8 x 9 5/8 in.)
The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California
Lantern Extract comprises twenty-four event scores created by Brecht, a chemist for many years at Johnson & Johnson’s New Brunswick office who collaborated on numerous occasions with the Rutgers and Douglass College art faculty. "Event" was Brecht's designation for the oblique, economical, open-ended activities he began to score in 1959. Inspired by the classes on non-traditional composition that he took with John Cage around the same time, Brecht's events were modeled on everyday experiences and activated by pedestrian sounds and objects. They eschewed drama as well as narrative. For each event, Brecht penned a related score, which he shared with others. Terse and poetic, most such scores took the form of propositions or invitations–to action, perception, or both.

Cooperation and Contradiction