All the more remarkable then that the work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg is so completely distinct; one could simply never mistake one artist's hand for the other's. It seems that the fact that Johns and Rauschenberg were involved together determined to some extent how they were understood. And yet, paradoxically, while their partnership was widely acknowledged, few comprehended what it really meant, and fewer still knew that it transcended simple friendship. John and Rauschenberg are in the curious position of being understood as a pair, but not a couple. Yet they were a couple; and the rather obvious silences, ellipses, and omissions that permeate the usual accounts of their history make no sense unless arrayed against an insistent and damaging homophobia that has led both artists to actually deny the substance of what they had together. LINK: The Art of Code Essay
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
Man ages all too easily, not Nature:
Year by year the Double Ninth returns.
On this Double Ninth,
The yellow blooms on the battlefield smell sweeter.
Each year the autumn wind blows fierce,
Unlike spring's splendour,
Yet surpassing spring's splendour,
See the endless expanse of frosty sky and water.
Olivier Messiaen often went out into the wild to transcribe bird songs and then incorporated the sounds into his music. A detailed look at the score of Quartet for the End of Time reveals palindrome layered rhythms with a clarinet bird call floating above the hundreds of harmonies interlaced in mathematical intricacy. His students included Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, George Benjamin, Iannis Xenakis and McCoy Tyner.
