welcome to a wonderful showthe Observer highlights a recent exhibition at a museum outside of New York City, a place we know and love that has received widespread attention.
With “Chainsaw” beating out Bruce Springsteen’s movies at the box office, it’s clear the boomer generation’s influence is waning. However, they do have one last movie-related extravaganza to show us: Sam Mendes’ four-part Beatles biopic, which will feature a movie for each member, starring Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Queen as George Harrison, and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr. The casting is appeasing to the younger generation but does little good to the millennials. I refuse to watch a Ringo movie unless the third act is all about the behind-the-scenes drama Thomas the Tank Engine.
On its face, this isn’t a terrible idea: people do like to see how great talent develops on its own and then comes together to achieve something greater than the sum of its parts. A similar motivation lies behind a new exhibition at the Ludwig Museum, “Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Jones, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly,” which is in some ways the first to examine these artists in each other’s context. The exhibition includes more than 180 works – paintings, drawings, scores, stage designs, costumes, photographs and films – and situates their collaborations within the broader political and cultural climate of the United States and Europe from the 1950s to the 1970s.
In this day and age anything is possible including these people being more than just friends. At times their story feels like a biopic: Rauschenberg and Twombly met at Black Mountain College in early 1951 and met Cunningham and Cage in New York the following year. Cross-pollination is inevitable. Rauschenberg and Twombly work on his first feature white painting The year they were together. Since these are all tributes to openness, of course they inspired Cage’s Silent Song 4’33” (1952).
Johns happened to have a studio near Rauschenberg and Twombly. His relationship with Rauschenberg would become one of the most important in the history of art. I’ve always had a soft spot for him Painted bronze (beer can) (1960), was inspired by the observation that the couple’s dealer, Leo Castelli, “could sell anything—even a pair of beer cans.” But in the context of this show, you clearly feel the influence of Rauschenberg. His combine harvesters and found sculptures are full of little jokes, like one beer on and another off.
The movement between Cunningham’s dancers and Twombly’s paintbrush also feels strong against this backdrop, and you might not realize how much Rauschenberg designed Cunningham’s costumes. The best of them all was the parachute dress he made for funny meeting (1958). It is able to poof without impeding agility and still assume a mostly human form. These include ephemera showcasing the friendship mentioned in the show’s title. If you look at the letters, it seems that Cage only communicated with his friends through mesoscopic poetry. The Fantastic Five prove that art and life go hand in hand when you have a good circle.
“Five friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Jones, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly” will be on display at the Ludwig Museum until January 11, 2026.
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