ART : The Randomest Show on Earth : A computer program governed by the I Ching dictates what will be displayed in John Cage’s ‘Rolywholyover A Circus.’ The exhibition by and about that radical ringmaster opens at MOCA next Sunday

John Cage was enchanted by the mystery and beauty of the commonplace, and he devoted himself to dissolving the barriers separating life and art. In fact, for Cage there was no separation between the two.

When Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition designer John Bowsher met with Cage last year to discuss the installation of “Rolywholyover A Circus,” the exhibition by and about the late composer/artist that opens next Sunday at MOCA, Bowsher was surprised. Although the show includes a rotating exhibition of art that changes daily, it seemed more subdued than many of the raucous multimedia works Cage had staged in the past.

Bowsher recalls saying to the artist, “Gee, John, when I hear the word circus I imagine a lot more going on, to which John replied, ‘Do you have dust? Do you have light? Do you have architecture? Then you have everything.’ ” The idea that art exists in the most basic materials of life is what this show is about in a nutshell.

MOCA curator Julie Lazar was developing the concept for the show, which she describes as “a skewed walk through the 20th Century in John Cage’s loafers,” when the composer died of a stroke last year at the age of 80. Asked if she considered shelving “Rolywholyover” in the months following Cage’s death, she replied, “Absolutely not, because we were far enough along in the planning that I felt confident we could execute the show as John envisioned it. I realized the loans could’ve been contested and that the funders could’ve pulled out--as one funder did--but conceptually, I knew we had a handle on it.

“In fact, I’ve tried to remain so true to where he left it that I’ve probably been less flexible than he would’ve been,” she adds. “John probably would’ve continued to finesse the show over the course of the tour and now we won’t have that, but basically I think it is as he wanted it. I feel his presence in ‘Rolywholyover’ in a very complete and beautiful way, and I think the people who come to see the show will find him here too.”

“Rolywholyover” looks dauntingly complex at a glance, but it hangs together by one simple rule: Every choice made for the show was subjected to a chance operation, a selection process governed by a computerized version of the I Ching.

This is how it works: Under Cage’s instruction, several bodies of work were assembled, including Cage’s own art, pieces by artists he admired drawn from across the United States and Europe, works exclusively from Los Angeles museums, and Cage ephemera. Every day sections of the show will be reinstalled on movable walls according to the dictates of chance, determined by a computer program designed for the show by composer Andrew Culver.

The rules of chance may instruct that some pieces borrowed for the show never go on view, while others are always exhibited. Chance could demand that two paintings be hung in the same spot on the wall (in which case one work will be hung directly above the other), or it could leave a long wall bare. The paintings get to dance with each other in this show, which also includes an area furnished with chess tables, a transparent file filled with a selection of Cage’s belongings, an interactive sound installation, books, plants, trees and river rocks.

What Cage has done in this subtle exercise in intelligent anarchy is dismantle the system of hierarchical judgment central to most museum thinking. In “Rolywholyover” the great treasures of art history--and several are to be included here--aren’t presented as being of any greater value than a river rock; thus, the idea of “the masterpiece” residing at the top of some imaginary pyramid of artistic achievement is completely upended. A Buddhist and devout student of the I Ching, Cage rejected the notion of the creation of an artwork as a supreme act of invention powered by the ego-driven will--for Cage, life and art were exercises in attentiveness, discipline and surrender.

“John was never interested in the idea of an object set up in a certain way for viewers to parade past and observe,” comments Cage’s longtime companion, choreographer Merce Cunningham. “He did a show a few years’ ago at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh that involved some of the same ideas that are operating in ‘Rolywholyover,’ and I think he believed deeply that a greater degree of chance, humor and fluidity needed to be built into the way museums work.”

Titled after a word coined by James Joyce to indicate revolution and dynamic movement in the author’s landmark novel “Finnegan’s Wake” (a book Cage discovered in 1976 and was preoccupied with for years), “Rolywholyover” began to take shape in 1989 when Lazar wrote Cage asking if he might be interested in doing a show at MOCA.

“He replied that he was busy and couldn’t be interrupted, but that it would be all right if I visited him, which of course I did,” she recalls. “We wound up agreeing to do a show and met several times throughout 1990-91 to discuss it.

“At the first meeting John asked me to write all the contemporary museums in America and get lists of their permanent collections,” Lazar continues. “I suggested we just write the 10 largest museums, and he agreed to that. We then agreed the show would be loosely biographical and would include people from different disciplines who’d played a role in his life; we came up with a list of people who were important for him and he did a chance operation on the list. Whenever we reached a point where any kind of choice was called for, John would use a chance operation.

“He then had us write all the museums in Southern California--there are 130--and ask them what they would be willing to loan to MOCA for a project by John Cage, the condition being that we promised to exhibit whatever they chose to loan,” she adds. “Twenty-one museums contributed to this part of the show, which is called the Museumcircle. This section of ‘Rolywholyover’ is really wild,” she laughs, “and it offers a unique, composite portrait of Los Angeles.”

Among the far-flung items included in Museumcircle are the skull of an elephant seal, a bustier owned by Ingrid Bergman, an Orange County land-use map, a bust of George Bernard Shaw, four manhole covers and a landscape by John Constable. Clearly, this is the section of the show where Cage’s highly developed sense of play is most in evidence.

The tone of the show shifts considerably in the adjoining gallery, which houses graphic works and musical scores by Cage. Although Cage is primarily known as an avant-garde composer, he created visual art throughout his life and exhibited regularly. “In the last 15 years of his life John began to produce quite a bit of visual art because opportunities to do that finally began to present themselves,” recalls Cunningham. “Most people aren’t familiar with this work but I don’t think that concerned him much--with John, it was always the doing of the thing that mattered.”

Among the Cage works on view are etchings, musical scores, watercolors and edible drawings made of organic materials. A mycologist who, on the advice of his friend Yoko Ono, maintained a strict macrobiotic diet for the last 15 years of his life, Cage had an abiding interest in the relationship between physical and spiritual health and the laws of nature, and this interest permeated every aspect of his creative life. Also governed by chance operations, his visual art usually incorporated organic materials and processes; he smoked the paper, for instance, for a series of watercolors, used feathers for the application of paints and inks, and executed a body of drawings by placing rocks on sheets of paper and tracing them.

If the volume of “Rolywholyover” goes down a few decibels in the gallery where Cage’s own visual art is displayed, it goes up and down simultaneously in the largest gallery, which houses the main body of work gathered for the show. This is the section of the show that will be rehung everyday by three museum aides, who will complete their task while the museum is open to the public. Of the 180 works assembled here, approximately half will be on view, while the remaining half will be stored in an archival area visible to the public. This is the room where walls move and paintings can crash into one another. It sounds quite cacophonous; however, the works Cage selected (with the help of chance, of course) are the very antithesis of that word.

“This is a very contemplative circus,” Lazar points out. “There are white paintings by Malevich and Robert Ryman, Mark Tobey’s white writing--the quiet beauty of the works in this room supersede anything chaotic in the method of their presentation.”

This section of the exhibition will no doubt come as a surprise to most of those attending “Rolywholyover,” as the show isn’t being promoted as an exhibition of 20th-Century masterpieces--nevertheless, several major works will be sliding up and down the MOCA walls this month. Among them: important pieces by Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell and Joseph Beuys; multiple artworks by Joseph Albers, Merce Cunningham, Arshile Gorky and Morris Graves; works by all the leading figures in the Fluxus Movement, including George Brecht, Allan Kaprow, Ono, George Maciunas and Nam June Paik; all four of the artists often referred to as “the sublimes”--Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Ryman and Mark Rothko; Pop works by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, and Surrealist works by Max Ernst and Man Ray. Also on view are pieces by Paul Klee, Yves Klein, Ellsworth Kelly, Franz Kline, Sol Lewitt, Cy Twombly, Piet Mondrian and Robert Motherwell, among others.

“Most exhibitions are designed to tell the viewer something quite specific,” says Lazar of the wide range of work on view, “but this is a show about space and freedom. John wanted people to take what they like from this rich mix of information, and just hang out and play chess.” (A devoted student of the game, Cage played chess every day of his life, but according to Jack W. Collins, who played chess regularly with Marcel Duchamp and gave lessons to Cage in the early ‘70s, “John wasn’t a very strong player because he didn’t care if he won or lost, and a good player has to care and has to hate his opponent. John was a very loving, kind person and simply wasn’t competitive enough to be a great player.”)

Adding another dimension to Cage’s circus will be “It Is About to Sound,” an interactive computer installation by David Rosenboom programmed with musical works by Cage, along with pieces by composers and musicians Cage admired; visitors are encouraged to sample the contents of this digital archive and create personalized musical collages. A second interactive computer, “Integrams,” by Jim Rosenberg, allows visitors to manipulate blocks of text to create poetic phrases.

Downstairs in the MOCA auditorium an ongoing performance program will take place, the details of which will not be announced. You may catch a lecture by Merce Cunningham, or you may see a local poet give a reading. What you experience will be entirely serendipitous.

In addition, 21 arts and educational organizations throughout Southern California are lanning Cage-related events to run in conjunction with “Rolywholyover.” Titled “Citycircus,” the program includes presentations at CalArts, Beyond Baroque, LACMA, LACE and the Long Beach Museum, among others. (For information about “Citycircus” or any “Rolywholyover” event, call 1-800-MOCA-YES. To facilitate Cage’s wish that museum-goers visit the show repeatedly in order to sense the forces of change and chance at work in “Rolywholyover,” a special admission fee will be in effect for the duration of the show.)

“John’s done huge musical compositions but this is the biggest museum piece he’s ever done--there is no finish line with this show and each institution taking it has a lot to learn,” says Lazar of the exhibition, which travels to Houston, New York, Tokyo and Philadelphia after closing at MOCA on Nov. 28. “In fact, the Philadelphia Museum wants to frame the contract for taking it,” she laughs. “The guards must be willing to play, the art handlers and registrars have to perform above and beyond the call of duty, and each venue must program an intensive schedule of live performance.”

A radical thinker who cleared the land for dozens of composers and artists who came after him, Cage devoted his life to the development of open-ended systems of creativity that allowed for a wide range of choice and experience. “Young people continued to seek John out up until the very end of his life because he was so youthful in his outlook and he had a talent for opening doors for people,” recalls Cage’s friend, dancer David Vaughan. The cultural Establishment, however, often heaped wildly negative criticism on Cage’s work which continues to be generally misunderstood, particularly in regards to his music.

“People mistakenly thought that since his work was created using methods of chance that you could do whatever the hell you wanted in them, but his music was actually quite precisely notated,” observes violinist Paul Zukovsky, who began working with Cage in 1976 and is scheduled to perform at MOCA. “John was in a no-win situation in that while he was often unhappy about the way his work was performed and felt the musicians violated his instructions, his social beliefs made it difficult for him to say that what the musicians were doing was unacceptable. When you’re an anarchist and believe in freedom to the extent that John did, you can’t exactly turn around and say, ‘Dammit, this is my piece and this isn’t what I had in mind!’ ”

Violinist Janos Negyesy of UC San Diego, who began working with Cage in 1974 and will also perform at MOCA, agrees that “although most people know John’s name and a few people know his ideas, his work really isn’t widely known or understood.”

Adds Cunningham: “Because John spent so much time talking about the idea of ‘nothingness’ people thought he didn’t actually do anything, but in fact, all he did was produce work. He worked from morning to night making things, and was constantly coming up with new ideas for things to do. He had a phenomenal energy level and he was able to maintain it for one simple reason: He was interested in what he was doing and in the world around him.”