Five Friends at Museum Ludwig: Art in Motion
Five artists. One shared language across music, dance, and visual art. This Cologne exhibition shows how friendship can become a creative method.
Date: 3. October 2025 – 11. January 2026
Venue: Museum Ludwig, Cologne
In Cologne, Museum Ludwig presents Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly (3 Oct 2025 – 11 Jan 2026) — an exhibition that treats postwar art less as a parade of lone geniuses, and more as a living network of exchange.
The premise is simple and surprisingly fresh: when artists spend time together, ideas travel. A score can behave like a drawing. A dance can shape how a painting holds space. A studio conversation can ripple into decades of work. This show follows those cross-influences between music, movement, and image-making — and makes a strong case for collaboration as a serious artistic force.
A few anchors help you navigate the conversation:
John Cage brings the radical openness of experimental music — where silence, chance, and instruction can be as meaningful as sound. His thinking expands what “composition” can look like across mediums.
Merce Cunningham pushes dance into new territory: movement as its own structure, not merely illustration. In this context, choreography feels like a visual system you experience with your whole body.
Robert Rauschenberg acts as a connector between worlds, pulling everyday materials, stage energy, and visual invention into the same frame — proof that art can be built from real life, not separated from it.
John Cage, Merce Cunningham und Robert Rauschenberg, Sadler’s Wells, London, 1964
Douglas H. Jeffery / Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Along the way, Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly add distinct visual vocabularies — from signs and symbols to gestures and charged marks — that echo (and resist) the influence of the group.
If you’re curious about how art gets made in the space between disciplines — and between people — this is a rewarding visit. And if the show sparks your appetite for bold, contemporary voices, explore ARTPIQ for emerging artists who are equally unafraid of crossing boundaries.
Robert Rauschenberg Axle, 1964 Vierteilig: Öl und Siebdrucktinte auf Leinwand
Foto: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv © Jasper Johns, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025
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