River Rocks and Smoke, #1, 4/11/90 1990

John Cage made this watercolor in 1990, and it feels like he’s searching for something, letting the process of making lead him to new discoveries. The painting is minimal, with delicate washes of color and simple, almost childlike shapes. It makes me wonder what he was thinking when he made it. Maybe he was trying to capture a fleeting moment or a feeling, a sense of the ephemeral, like smoke. Or maybe he was just enjoying the act of putting color on paper, letting the materials guide him. It reminds me of Cy Twombly's playful and poetic explorations of mark-making. Look at the texture of the paper and how the watercolor bleeds and blends. It's like he's embracing chance and improvisation. The lines have an incredible lightness, almost like a dance. Ultimately, art is about the conversation between artists, their work building on what came before, a continuous dialogue across time and space, full of ambiguity and openness to endless interpretations.