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Merce Cunningham: the Accidental Icon

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Merce Cunningham: the Accidental Icon Merce Cunningham: The Accidental Icon Jennifer Harris Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Prerequisite for Honors in Art History April 2012 © 2012 Jennifer Harris Acknowledgments Writing this thesis was immensely challenging and would have been impossible without significant help and support along the way. I would never have become interested in Cunningham or in the history of dance, for that matter, without Catie Bell, who introduced me to the writing of Joan Acocella in the context of Plato and Marcus Aurelius. I must also thank Jennifer Homans who generously helped me build the bibliography and understand the complexity of the project in its early stages. Finally, Professor Meredith Martin has been a mentor throughout my time at Wellesley and it is thanks in large part to her encouragement that I have pursued independent work in art history. I feel very fortunate to have benefited from the guidance of two outstanding advisors. I am particularly grateful to Professor Martin Brody for agreeing to advise my project without ever knowing me as a student and for challenging my critical thinking throughout the year. Over the past few years, Professor Patricia Berman has been an inspiration and has helped me cultivate my interest in the intersection between dance and art history. I couldn’t have asked for a more fitting and knowledgeable pair in studying the interdisciplinary work of Merce Cunningham. My research has been supported by a number of generous individuals. In particular, I’d like to thank Brooke Henderson and Jeanne Hablanian at the Wellesley College Art Library, Abigail Sebaley at the Walker Art Center, Alice Helpern at the Merce Cunningham Studio, and the librarians at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the University of Arkansas Library’s Special Collections Division. My research travels were made possible by the Jerome A. Schiff Fellowship, which I am honored to have received. Thanks also to Professors Vernon Shetley and David Kelley who agreed to serve on my reading committee and who were both willing to discuss Cunningham throughout the year. My deepest gratitude goes to my friends and family who have been enormously supportive throughout the project. My sister was my number one cheerleader all the way from Chicago and my father was instrumental in helping me coordinate my various research adventures. Wendy Dickieson, Ava Bramson, Aileen Patimeteeporn, Alya Forster, and Hannah Townsend have all been invaluable sources of moral support and editorial advice. Harris 2 Table of Contents List of figures ..................................................................................................................................4 Introduction .....................................................................................................................................5 Chapter 1: Merce Cunningham: A Brief History ..........................................................................14 Chapter 2: The Alternative Academy: Building Cunningham’s Networks ..................................40 Chapter 3: Framing the New America: Early Critical Discourse on Cunningham .......................69 Chapter 4: Becoming an American Institution: Cunningham’s Patronage ...................................96 Figures .........................................................................................................................................128 Bibliography................................................................................................................................140 Harris 3 List of Figures i.1 Roaratorio, 2011. Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Brooklyn Academy of Music. (New York Times) i.2 Martha Graham in “Letter to the World,” 1941. Photograph: Barbara Morgan. (Artstor) i.3 Second Hand, 1970. Merce Cunningham and dancers. (Artstor) 1.1 Antic Meet, 1958. Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Photograph. (Walker Art Center) 1.2 Root of an Unfocus, 1944. Photograph: Barbara Morgan (Vaughan 31) 1.3 Merce Cunningham at Black Mountain College, 1948. (Artstor) 1.4 Septet, 1953. Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Photograph: Ara Ignatius. (Vaughan 76) 1.5 Robert Rauschenberg, Minutiae, 1954. Combine: oil, paper, fabric, newspaper, wood, metal, plastic, with mirror on string, on wood structure. Photograph: John G. Ross. Walker Art Center. (Vaughan 82) 1.6 Antic Meet, 2011 (originally performed in 1958). Merce Cunningham Dance Company. (Walker Art Center) 1.7 Charles Atlas and Merce Cunningham, Ocean, 1994/2011. Film still. (New York Times) 1.8 Biped, 1999. Merce Cunningham Dancers. (Artstor) 2.1 Merce Cunningham Dance Company preparing to leave for world tour, 1964. (Brown) 2.2 Jasper Johns, Target with Plaster Casts, 1955. Encaustic and collage on canvas. Castelli Collection. (Artstor) 2.3 Robert Rauschenberg, Trophy I, 1959. Combine with oil, wood, old photographs, paint, newspaper, metal, sign, fabric. Kunsthaus Zurich. (Vaughan 319) 3.1 Willem de Kooning, Zurich, 1947. Oil on canvas, 36 x 24 ½ in. Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (Kleeblatt 54) 3.2 Robert Rauschenberg, Monogram, 1955. Combine: oil, paper, fabric, painted reproductions, wood, rubber shoe hell, and tennis ball on canvas and wood mounted on four wheels with oil on Angora goat and rubber tire, 106.7 x 160.7 x 163.6cm, Moderna Museet, Stockholm. (Artstor) 3.3 Antic Meet, 1958. Merce Cunningham Dance Company. (New York Times) 3.4 Nocturnes, 1956. Merce Cunningham Dance Company, costumes designed by Robert Rauschenberg. Photograph: Oscar Bailey. (Vaughan 93) 3.5 The Saturday Evening Post cover, 1968. Costume design for Nocturnes by Robert Rauschenberg. Photograph: John Launois. (Vaughan 96) 4.1 John Improvising Sound System at the Fondation Maeght, St. Paul de Vence, 1966. (Brown) 4.2 Scramble, 1967. Left to right: Jeff Slayton, Valda Setterfield, Carolyn Brown, and Chase Robinson. Photograph: James Klosty. (Vaughan 158) 4.3 Rainforest, 1967. Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Décor by Andy Warhol. Photograph: James Klosty. (Vaughan 163) 4.4 Walkaround Time, 1968. Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Décor by Jasper Johns and Marcel Duchamp. Photograph: James Klosty. (Vaughan 164) Harris 4 Introduction Merce Cunningham: The Accidental Icon “I think I am as American as anybody else is, as far as that goes, it’s possible that in America the climate, by that I mean the situation and everything, conspires to bring this about.”1 Merce Cunningham is widely acknowledged as one of America’s most important choreographers of the twentieth century. Known for his non-hierarchical treatment of the stage space and his expansion of the very notion of dance movement, Cunningham can be credited with introducing Dada- and Zen Buddhist-inspired principals of chance into a discipline that was weighed down by the “cliché” tradition of narrative and self-expression. Given these and numerous additional innovations, it is conceivable that in the history of modern dance, Cunningham has had the greatest impact. Yet, in December 2011, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company dissolved, following an elaborate two-year “Legacy Plan,” which was conceived of by Cunningham himself prior to his death in 2009. This celebration of the company’s history and “roadmap” for its conclusion consists of five key components that were organized by the Cunningham Dance Foundation: the preservation of Cunningham’s dances and choreographic process through the creation of digital “Dance Capsules;” supplemental compensation to be given to the company’s dancers, musicians, and staff; the transition from the Cunningham Dance Foundation (founded in 1964 to fund the company’s first world tour) to the Merce Cunningham Trust (established by Cunningham in 2000) which will manage the rights to Cunningham’s work; the preservation of the company’s sets and costumes through their placement in the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and lastly, the final two-year worldwide “Legacy Tour,” which culminated in site-specific performances in New York City’s Park Avenue Armory, itself a historic monument of New York City. 1 Merce Cunningham, The Dancer and the Dance: Merce Cunningham in conversation with Jacqueline Lesschaeve. New York and London: Marion Boyars, 1985, 130. Harris 5 In the final moments of the Legacy Tour, critics mourned the company’s departure. Joan Acocella, dance critic for The New Yorker, wrote: […] it seems to me that [Cunningham’s] absence will have a terrible effect. Dance is a small field, and any major loss, even if people eventually forget it, is not without consequence. I try to think what other artist Cunningham was like. All I can come up with is Blake. Cunningham was that clear, that unpretentious, that visionary, in a modernist way. Now that he is gone, his kind of blunt beauty will vanish from dance. Maybe, in twenty years, a different master will revive it. Or maybe it will just die.2 Though dance companies fold with unfortunate regularity, experts like Acocella considered the closure of Cunningham’s company in particular to mark the end of an era, a profound loss indeed. This moment calls for a closer look at Cunningham’s legacy as an American icon: how did this happen? And what does it mean? Initially working in obscurity, but eventually rising to the forefront of experiments across media, Cunningham helped to define the future of American modern dance. Born in Centralia, Washington, he moved to New York in the fall of 1939 after Martha Graham invited him to perform as a soloist with her company. In 1944, he presented
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