Joseph Kosuth and John Cale | Balzac's Solitude

Joseph Kosuth and John Cale 

Balzac's Solitude 

Cincinnati, USA: Solway Gallery, 1994 

36 x 23 x 10 cm. 

Edition of 12 signed and dated copies

Balzac's Solitude is a collaboration between one of the founding members of the Velvet Underground, and one of the earliest practitioners of Conceptual Art.1 

The work consists of a leather-bound book housing a 144-note Reuge music box mechanism. Kosuth designed the work, mostly the inclusion of the quote from French novelist Honore de Balzac: “Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.” Cale composed the music. 

He originally set out to create a low rumbling sound to be reproduced by the music box mechanism. When this proved impossible, he substituted an existing untitled composition he had written for a friend’s wedding. I haven’t heard it, but the LA Times described it as "a bland little piece of no particular distinction."

The work was created for the 1994 exhibition The Music Box Project, curated by Claudia Gould. Gould had co-founded Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine with Joseph Nechvatal and Carol Parkinson in 1983. When their audio periodical folded after a decade of activity, she revisited the idea of music boxes by artists, something originally conceived of as a fundraising edition for Tellus. 

Other works in the show include Laurie Anderson's witty Tilt #1, which utilizes as a carpenter’s level. One of two short tunes by Anderson plays, depending on which ay the level is titled. The movement also activates either a bobbing boat or tiny floating balloon. 

John Cage contributed Extended Lullaby, which features a dozen music boxes, each playing a fragment of a piece he composed for his partner Merce Cunningham's Dance Company a year before his death in 1992.

Kiki Smith transcribed a poem she wrote into Braille and then translated the raised patterns on the page into the pins of the revolving music box cylinder, creating a brief, atonal composition.

Other artists in the exhibition include John Armleder, Nam June Paik, Aminah Robinson and Haim Steinbach. David Byrne, Stevie Wonder, Peter Gabriel, and Glenn Branca all declined to participate. 

1. Josuth Kosuth provided the cover graphic for John Cale’s live album, Fragments of a Rainy Season, two years prior. It also consisted solely of a quotation: two lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: 

Banquo: It will rain tonight.

First murderer: Let it come down!