These early letters from John Cage to Merce Cunningham will be revelatory for many. While the two are widely known as a dynamic, collaborative duo, the story of how and when they came together has never been fully told. In the 39 letters of this collection, spanning 1942 46, Cage shows himself to be a man falling deeply in love. When they first met at the Cornish School in Seattle in the 1930s, Cage was 26 to Cunningham's 19, their relationship was purely that of teacher and student, and Cage was also very much married.
It was in Chicago that their romantic relationship would begin. Cage was teaching at Moholy-Nagy's School of Design when Cunningham passed through town as a dancer with the Martha Graham Company on March 14, 1942. The letters begin in January, but a week after Cunningham's performance, the essential correspondence begins. Cage's letters to Cunningham are passionate, distraught, romantic and confused, occasionally containing snippets of poetry and song. They are also more than love letters, with intimations that resonate with our experience of the later John Cage.
Love, Icebox takes its shape from these letters transcribed, chronologically ordered and in some instances reproduced in facsimile. Laura Kuhn, Cage's assistant from 1986 to 1992 and now longtime director of the John Cage Trust, adds an introduction, postscript and running commentary. Photographic illustrations of their final 18th St loft, as well as personal and household objects left behind, remind us of the substance and rituals of a long-shared life.
