Xenia Cage

Xenia Cage (born Xenia Andreyevna Kashevaroff, August 15, 1913 – September 26, 1995) was an American painter, sculptor, bookbinder, conservator, and musician notable for her surrealist mobiles and artistic collaborations.[2] Her work has been described as on the “cutting edge of surrealism in sculpture” for her time.[3]

Xenia Cage
Xenia with one of her wood-frame and rice-paper mobiles, circa 1943
Born
Xenia Andreyevna Kashevaroff

(1913-08-15)August 15, 1913
Juneau, Alaska[1]
DiedSeptember 26, 1995(1995-09-26) (aged 82)
NationalityAmerican
Known forPainting, Sculpture
MovementSurrealism
Spouse(s)
John Cage
​
(m. 1935⁠–⁠1945)​

Early life and education

Xenia was one of six "talented, striking and volatile" daughters of Very Reverend Andrei (Andrew) Petrovich Kashevarof (1863–1940), Dean of Alaska churches, who also ministered at Jackson, California, and Seattle, before returning to Juneau, Alaska, and Martha (née Bolshanin). She studied art at Reed College, Portland, Oregon.[4][5]

Career

Throughout her marriage to the musician and composer John Cage- from 1935 to 1945- Xenia performed in his percussion ensemble.[6] Cage is believed to have been the "female performer" who smashed a lime ricky bottle into a can of broken glass at the culmination of John Cage's Construction in Metal.[7] In 1943, Cage exhibited an abstract mobile in Peggy Guggenheim's show Exhibition by 31 Women at the Art of This Century gallery in New York.[8] The next year, Cage had a solo exhibition of her mobiles at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York.[7] Cage notably collaborated with artists Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp as a bookbinder, and designed a chess table in tandem with a set created by Max Ernst.[9] By the 1950s, Cage had ceased to publicly exhibit her art, and worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan. She also worked as a conservator at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York from 1968.[9][1]

Personal life

In 1935, she married the musician and composer John Cage; the marriage ended in 1945 when a ménage à trois with the choreographer Merce Cunningham became a private affair between the two men; John Cage and Cunningham were together until Cage's death.[10] In a 1992 interview, John Cage noted that their subsequent relationship had "not been particularly friendly", and said that due to her "barby" wit, "if I telephone her or write to her, I take my life in my hands". A pregnancy during the marriage ended in an abortion.[11]

At her death in 1995, "she was not a forgotten artist, but tragically, an unknown one", with virtually none of her artwork known to have survived.[1] Her friend and erstwhile musical collaborator Jean Erdman paid for her funeral. Her grave is in the family plot at the Evergreen Cemetery in Juneau, Alaska.[12]

References
  1. Sheehy, John. "Sculptor of the Surreal, Whacker of Flowerpots". Reed magazine. Reed College. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
  2. "Music: Percussionist". Time. February 22, 1943. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
  3. Rosemont, P. (1998). ‘’Surrealist women: An international anthology’’. Austin: University of Texas Press.
  4. Russian America: A Biographical Dictionary, Richard A. Pierce, The Limestone Press, 1990, pp. 215-216
  5. John Cage: Composed in America, ed. Marjorie Perloff and Charles Junkerman, University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 86
  6. Swed, Mark (September 1, 2012). "John Cage's genius an L.A. story". Retrieved March 7, 2015.
  7. Silverman, Kenneth (2010). Begin again: A biography of John Cage. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
  8. Butler, Cornelia H.; Schwartz, Alexandra (2010). Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art. p. 45. ISBN 9780870707711.
  9. List, Larry. 2005. The imagery of chess revisited. New York: Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum.
  10. Kaufman, Susan (August 30, 2012). "John Cage, with Merce Cunningham, revolutionised music, too". Washington Post. Retrieved June 28, 2015.
  11. John Cage: Composed in America, ed. Marjorie Perloff and Charles Junkerman, University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 99
  12. City and Borough of Juneau cemetery map, Retrieved March 7 2020
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