Drawing for Changes and Disappearances No. 33

1967–1979

Books: “A Year from Monday”, “M”, “Empty Words”

Cage goes on writing books of prose and poetry (mesostics): “A Year from Monday” is first published by Wesleyan University Press in 1967 (other accounts give 1968), “M” in 1973 and “Empty Words” in 1979.

1978 · 入会

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

January 1978

Prints: Kathan Brown's invitation

In January 1978 Kathan Brown of Crown Point Press invites Cage to engage in printmaking; from then on he produces a series of prints every year until his death, and these, together with some late watercolours, make up the largest part of his extant visual art.

1980s

Illness in the 1980s: a stroke, a broken arm

Over the 1980s Cage's health worsens progressively: arthritis, sciatica and arteriosclerosis; he has a stroke that restricts the movement of his left leg, breaks an arm in 1985, and pursues a macrobiotic diet. His biographer David Revill links this with the fire that appears in his visual work from 1985 — not only the fire of passion but fire as transitoriness and fragility.