- Born:
- September 12, 1922, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
- Died:
- December 8, 2004, New York, New York (aged 82)
- Notable Works:
- “The Marrying Maiden”
- “Verdurous Sanguinaria”
Jackson Mac Low
-
Who was Jackson Mac Low?
Jackson Mac Low (1922–2004) was an American poet, composer, and performance artist celebrated for his "chance method" style of poetry.
Mac Low's "chance method" involved generating random word assortments and incorporating lines from previously published texts, playing with sound and rhythmic silences. His play The Marrying Maiden (1960) gained acclaim after being performed by the Living Theatre. He copublished An Anthology of Chance Operations… (1963) with composer La Monte Young, which became a fundamental resource for the Fluxus art movement, of which Mac Low was a founding member.
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What types of art did Jackson Mac Low create?
Jackson Mac Low was an American poet, composer, and performance artist known for his "chance method" style of poetry writing. Mac Low's works often blurred the lines between poetry and performance. He is known for his performance art, poetry, and plays.
Mac Low's "chance method" involved generating random assortments of words and incorporating lines from previously published texts. He also experimented with sound and included rhythmic silences, with the number of words and silences determined by the throw of a die. He was a founding member of the Fluxus art movement, and his works were often performed on stages in Europe.
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Why is Jackson Mac Low known for both poetry and music?
Jackson Mac Low (1922–2004) was an American poet, composer, and performance artist known for his "chance method" style, which explains his recognition in both poetry and music. In this method, he generated random word assortments, incorporated lines from previously published texts, and played with sound, including rhythmic silences.
Mac Low's work often blurred the line between poetry and performance, gaining acclaim in the early 1960s. His play The Marrying Maiden (1960) was derived from lines of Yijing, an ancient Chinese work, and had a score by experimentalist composer John Cage. Mac Low also participated in Happenings and was a founding member of the Fluxus art movement.
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What is unique about the way Jackson Mac Low wrote his poems and music?
Jackson Mac Low, an American poet, composer, and performance artist, was known for his unique "chance method" style of poetry writing. This process generated a random assortment of words and incorporated lines from previously published texts. Mac Low also experimented with sound and included rhythmic silences, using slashes to represent them. The numbers of words and silences per line were determined by the throw of a die, and he included instructions for how to read the poems. His work often blurred the lines between poetry and performance, earning him acclaim in the early 1960s. Mac Low was a founding member of the Fluxus art movement. His method is also referred to as "aleatoric" or chance music, where certain parts are left for the performer to improvise.
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How did Jackson Mac Low involve performers and audiences in his art?
Jackson Mac Low employed the chance method in his art, which involved random word selection and incorporation of lines from existing texts. In his performances, such as The Marrying Maiden performed by the Living Theatre, Mac Low used scripts derived from the ancient Chinese text, Yijing, and included scores by experimental composer John Cage. He also participated in Happenings, like the performance of his work Verdurous Sanguinaria at Yoko Ono's home in 1961, which sourced words from 26 dictionaries. His work often included instructions for how the poems should be read, directly involving the audience in the interpretation and performance of his pieces.
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How did Jackson Mac Low influence other artists and modern experimental art?
Jackson Mac Low, an American poet, composer, and performance artist, significantly impacted experimental art through his "chance method" style, which uses random word assortments and incorporates lines from previous texts.
Mac Low's work with the Living Theatre on The Marrying Maiden (1960), featuring a score by John Cage, gained him early recognition. As a founding member of the Fluxus art movement, his co-publication of An Anthology of Chance Operations… (1963) with La Monte Young became a fundamental resource. His pieces were regularly performed, and in the 1960s, members of Fluxus took some of his works to Europe’s stages. Many of his later works were collaborations with Anne Tardos, whom he married in 1990.
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Jackson Mac Low (born September 12, 1922, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died December 8, 2004, New York, New York) was an American poet, composer, and performance artist known for his “chance method” style of poetry writing.
From 1939 to 1943 Jackson Mac Low attended the University of Chicago, where he studied philosophy, poetics, and literature. He graduated with an Associate of Arts degree and moved to New York City, where he would reside for the rest of his life. During his early years there, Mac Low took a variety of jobs, including factory worker, tutor, music teacher, and messenger. In 1955 he returned to school in order to improve his job prospects. He enrolled in Brooklyn College to study classical languages and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Greek (1958).
Throughout the 1950s, Mac Low associated with the American experimentalist movement and the New American Poetry movement. His poetry explored the creation and performance of work through the “chance method”—a process that generates a random assortment of words and that incorporates lines from previously published texts. Through that method, Mac Low also played with sound and included rhythmic silences. He used the chance method for the first time when he wrote 5 biblical poems (1954–55). The poems in that series were derived from a haphazard collection of lines from the Hebrew scriptures and included slashes to represent rhythmic silences. The numbers of words and silences per line were determined by the throw of a die. At the beginning of the text, Mac Low included a set of instructions for how to read the poems.
During the early 1960s, Mac Low began to receive acclaim for his poetry and recognition for walking a line between poetry and performance. His first great success came with the performance by the Living Theatre of his play The Marrying Maiden (1960), which had a script derived from lines of Yijing, an ancient Chinese work that was one of the Five Classics of Confucianism, and a score by experimentalist composer John Cage. Mac Low regularly participated in Happenings, such as a performance of his work Verdurous Sanguinaria in 1961 at the home of Yoko Ono. The words of that play were sourced from 26 different dictionaries. In 1963, he copublished (with composer La Monte Young) An Anthology of Chance Operations…, which became a fundamental resource for the Fluxus art movement, of which Mac Low was a founding member. Mac Low wrote prolifically; his works were performed regularly, and in the 1960s members of Fluxus took some of his works to the stages of Europe. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Mac Low taught English composition at New York University.
Mac Low published some 27 books of poetry and plays as well as a recording on compact disc, Open Secrets (1993), with performances by Mac Low, Anne Tardos, and a group of instrumentalists. Most of his later work was created in collaboration with Tardos, a visual and performance artist whom he married in 1990. In 1999 he received the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets.