Exhibition Review: “Five Friends” at Museum Ludwig

Welcome to One Fine Show, where Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum not in New York City, a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention.

As the “Chainsaw Man” movie trounces the one about Bruce Springsteen at the box office, it’s clear that the influence of the Baby Boomers is waning. They do, however, have one last grand act of cinematic relevance to inflict upon us: Sam Mendes’ four-part Beatles biopic, which will feature a single movie for each member, starring Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr. The casting is a sop to younger generations, but there’s little there for millennials. I refuse to see the Ringo movie unless the third act is entirely about behind-the-scenes drama on Thomas the Tank Engine.

Not that it’s a terrible idea on the face of it: people do like to see how great talents develop on their own and then come together to be greater than the sum of their parts. A similar motivation lies behind “Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly,” a new exhibition at Museum Ludwig that is somehow the first to examine these artists in the context of each other. The show includes over 180 works—paintings, drawings, scores, stage designs, costumes, photographs and films—and situates their collaborations within the broader political and cultural climate of 1950s-1970s America and Europe.

Anything was possible in this era, including the fact that these men were much more than friends. At times their story feels like a biopic: Rauschenberg and Twombly became romantically involved in early 1951, having met at Black Mountain College, and would meet Cunningham and Cage the following year in New York. Cross-pollination was inevitable. Rauschenberg and Twombly worked on his first White Paintings the year they got together. Since these were tributes to openness, of course they inspired Cage’s silent song 4’33” (1952).

Johns happened to have a studio right near Rauschenberg and Twombly. His relationship with Rauschenberg would go on to be one of the most significant in art history. I’ve always had a soft spot for his Painted Bronze (Ale Cans) (1960), inspired by an observation that the pair’s dealer Leo Castelli “could sell anything—even a pair of beer cans.” But in the context of this show, you clearly feel Rauschenberg’s influence. His combines and found sculptures are rife with tiny jokes, much the way one of the beers is opened and the other one closed.

The movements between Cunningham’s dancers and Twombly’s brush feel strong in this context too, and you may not realize how many costumes Rauschenberg designed for Cunningham. Among the best was the parachute dress he made for Antic Meet (1958). It manages to poof without hindering agility and still displays much of the human form. Among all this are ephemera that displays the friendship mentioned in the show’s title. If you go by these letters, it seems that Cage only communicated to his friends via mesostic poetry. The Fab Five demonstrated that when you have a good circle, art and life are inseparable.

“Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly” is on view at Museum Ludwig through January 11, 2026.

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