Chess

Cage and Duchamp apparently got together to play chess after Cage learned of Duchamp's failing health. Duchamp was getting ill after Cage and he met, and rather than sulk about losing a contact who was not only having tremendous influence on the Dada and the Avant-Garde, Cage decided to use his passion to make music.

Duchamp had gotten into studying and playing Chess, and Cage used his interest to not only keep Duchamp in good spirits, but to use his passion for musical purposes as well. Cage entitled the piece Reunion, and it was a chess game between he and Duchamp set to music. Cage set each move to a sound and then allowed the game to play itself.

In reading this article, it became apparent that Cage and Duchamp are bound to one-another in a way many artist-musician's are not. Duchamp, for example, in the mid 40's Duchamp up and left his studio. He did this as a work of art itself. Duchamp was making a work of non-art, so to speak, which is a mirror image of Cage's 4'33".

Duchamp's work can often seem arbitrary, random. So can Cage's.

Duchamp, Why Not Sneeze... 1964

As a Dadaist, Duchamp stood for anti-art, art against the current aesthetic, as coined in Switzerland. Cage's music is sometimes called anti-music as well, standing as a stark contrast to everything that was going on following musical tradition.

These two artists share artistic philosophy in this way, using their art as a means of anti-art. Duchamp also dabbled in Readymades, pieces of found art that were aesthetically neutral, in order to question the idea behind the adoration of art itself.
    "My idea was to choose an object that wouldn't attract me, either by its beauty or by its ugliness. To find a point of indifference in my looking at it, you see." Duchamp from a BBC interview, 1966. Cage does much the same thing in his works, using music as a means of questioning what music is, how we define it, and how to appreciate it.

the correlation between these two artists is undeniable, ultimately it boils down to questioning what art is, and why it is. Although an important question to ask, the lack of precision with which things like found art have is ludicrous. "One man's trash is another man's treasure" has been true for centuries. I find it maddening that people respect that kind of art. The concept itself is all that is important, but the fact that this idea still persists is ridiculous.

Found art and chance compositions show little, if any, respect to art. Without proper preparation, deliberation, and intent, art becomes oblivious. Without the work put in, why should, and why would anyone care? Without this sense of purpose and preparation, anything is art. While it must be true that anything can be art, simply taking an object and calling it art in an effort to prove a point is unfounded and lazy, and brings down other artists by taking the place of an artist who works and toils towards making something beautiful, rather than calling something beautiful.