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In anticipation of the premiere of Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, two of the sponsors of the Town Hall retrospective, encouraged John Cage to display several of Cage’s scores in a midtown gallery. As a result, Cage’s scores began to be accorded recognition as visual works of art. Note the strong contrast there is between Ashton’s description of the visual impact of his score (“calligraphic beauty” and “a delicate sense of design”) as opposed to the often violent and jarring impact that Cage’s “mixed-up” sound world had on audiences. Like the disjuncture between the impersonal grace of Zen and the crushing violence of Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty, the sensory impact of Cage’s chance-based work confronts viewers and listeners with strange and puzzling contradictions. What Cage’s work ultimately is remains deliberately elusive.