The Mod Squad

THREE old friends and collaborators got together at the end of October last year in London to celebrate one another in several different exhibitions and performances. There were 14 paintings by Jasper Johns, dated between 1979 and 1982, in one part of the [Anthony] d'Offay Gallery. John Cage performed in another area, reading a word score that highlights quotations from Mr. Johns, with 63 framed pages of the score of "Solo for Piano" from "Concert for Piano and Orchestra" (1957-58) hung on the walls around him. Eleven videotapes of choreography by Merce Cunningham ran continuously in a third space in the same gallery. That night a gala dinner took place at the Victoria and Albert Museum. And the following evening Mr. Cunningham opened a two-week season at the Sadler's Wells Theater. Such a book, honoring three men whose support of one another has been integral to their success and survival as artists, especially in the close collaboration of John Cage and Merce Cunningham (dating from 1942), might have seemed an ideal opportunity for a personal history of the relationship. But according to [Anne Seymour], the gallery director who wrote the foreword, the book's purpose was to focus on the three disciplines of the artists, how their forms and themes interact or illustrate common concerns. Four critics gamely touch on these elusive linkages, and [Susan Sontag], in an anomalous entry -- a prose meditation in 10 short numbered segments -- plays on attributes and usages of the knives, forks and spoons that line and frame the sides of three of Mr. Johns's cross-hatch works -- the "edible" subject, perhaps, of "Dancers on a Plane." Detail from John Cage's score for "Solo for Piano," 1957-58; Merce Cunningham in "Antic Meet," 1958; Jasper Johns's painting "Between the Clock and the Bed," 1981. (From "Cage Cunningham Johns")