An iconic work from the Museum of Modern Art in New York will be on view in the coming months at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. It is the first time the piece “Bed” by Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) has been loaned out, said museum director Yilmaz Dziewior. “The bed is essentially the most private thing there is. You are born in a bed, you love in a bed, you usually die in a bed. So a very intimate place — and that is what Rauschenberg transposes into the image.”
The 1955 work is part of the exhibition “Five Friends,” which opens on Friday. It presents Rauschenberg’s work in dialogue with those of John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, and Cy Twombly. All five were friends in the postwar era, some even lovers. Because homosexuality was still taboo, they often worked with insinuations.
“What struck me as unusual was that we have now spent three and a half years on the exhibition, and now you suddenly see how timely the topic unfortunately remains,” Dziewior said. “If we look at what is happening in the United States. But you can also look to Germany, where people are once again running into difficulties with gendered language. The repression these five artists experienced in their careers is thus becoming more topical again — and I find that alarming.”
The exhibition had previously been shown at the Brandhorst Museum in Munich (TheColu.mn reported).
