This text brings together Moira Roth's articles, lectures and interviews on two men who embodied the spirit of the avant-garde - Marcel Duchamp and John Cage. With their gradual transformation into "classical" figures, Roth aims to reconsider and re-evaluate them.



First Published in 1999. For the first time gathered together in book form, here are the influential writings of Moira Roth-articles, lectures, and inter­views-on the two men who for so long embodied the very spirit of the avant­garde, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage. For almost thirty years Duchamp and Cage, who seemed to live on the border of modernism, and later, of postmodernism, alternately have fascinated, irritated, inspired, and daunted the author. Since her initial engagement with Duchamp and Cage in the early seventies, Roth increasingly focused on the work of many American artists-primarily women-only to return to Duchamp and Cage intermit­tently. At first, they were an inspiration for her writing and teaching. However, as they transformed themselves into classical figures, she came to reconsider and re-evaluate them. This collection offers a wide variety of literary forms-analytic, diaristic, art historical, and autobiographical-all of which Roth has used in her work. Collectively these writings form the subject of compelling and unique critical exchange between Moira Roth, who holds the Trefethen Chair of Art History at Mills College, Oakland, and Jonathan D.Katz, who is Chair of the Department of Gay and Lesbian Studies at City College, San Francisco.