I have just picked up Dancing Around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp — the catalog for an exhibition I very regrettably just missed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Described in December 2012 by The New York Times as a “favorite museum show of the year,” it examined the intersections and collaborations among the composer John Cage, choreographer Merce Cunningham, and visual artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg with the great Marcel Duchamp at the center of it all. We are talking about, arguably, some of the most exciting, profound and pivotal years in New York and in American art. Conceived and presented by curator Carlos Basualdo and contemporary artist Philippe Parreno, the exhibition contained over 100 works in addition to live performances. The catalog is full of seriously interesting essays by and about these artists and features a truly masterful chronology. While it certainly doesn’t replace the experience of the exhibition, I have to say, I am completely enthralled.

Dancing Around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp. (Philadelphia Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2012)