LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is presenting Merce Cunningham, Clouds and Screens, an exploration of choreographer Merce Cunningham’s dynamic artistic collaborations. Cunningham (1919–2009) revolutionized dance through his partnerships with leading artists who created costumes, films, music, and décor and whose independent creative instincts he held in the highest regard. Known for embracing risk and chance, Cunningham believed in the radical notion that movement, sound, and visual art could exist independently of each other, coming together only during the “common time” of a performance. Spanning BCAM, Level 1, the exhibition features immersive installations by Charles Atlas and Andy Warhol, two artists associated with the choreographer’s company, along with two video projections of early dances by Cunningham.

Anticipating the celebration of Cunningham’s centennial, Merce Cunningham, Clouds and Screens is organized by José Luis Blondet, curator of special initiatives at LACMA, and is excerpted from Merce Cunningham: Common Time, a major survey of the artist’s collaborative projects organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 2017.

Andy Warhol’s whimsical Silver Clouds, created with scientist and engineer Billy Kluver, greets visitors to the exhibition upon entrance to the BCAM lobby. Dozens of silver-colored “clouds,” filled with a mix of air and helium, hover in space, shifting with the movement of visitors. Warhol (1928–1987) thought of them as floating paintings that people could play with. Silver Clouds debuted at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1966; after Cunningham saw the show, he approached Warhol about adapting them as décor for his dance RainForest.

Anchoring the exhibition, Charles Atlas’s posthumous homage to Cunningham, MC9 (short for “Merce Cunningham to the ninth power”), addresses the decades-long investigation developed by the artists on the relationship of live performance and video documentation. For MC9, Atlas chose excerpts from 21 dances for camera and documentary videos he made with Cunningham and interspersed the footage with graphics, color fields, and countdown leader. Atlas and Cunningham’s “dances for camera” featured such techniques as inviting the camera to move onstage with the dancers and using cross-cutting and animation techniques to suggest multiple events happening simultaneously.

Atlas (b. 1949) has been a pioneering figure in film and video for over 40 years, forging new territory in a far-reaching range of genres, stylistic approaches, and techniques. Throughout his production, Atlas has consistently fostered collaborative relationships, most notably with Cunningham, for whom he served as in-house videographer for a decade from the early 1970s through 1983. Their close working relationship continued until Cunningham’s death in 2009.

Two videos of early Cunningham dances are shown in an adjacent gallery: Changeling (1957, filmed 1958), a solo piece for which Robert Rauschenberg designed the set, costume, and lighting; and Night Wandering (1958, filmed 1964)—a duet with star dancer Carolyn Brown—for which Rauschenberg redesigned costumes and lighting. Los Angeles-based dancer and choreographer Jennie MaryTai Liu (b. 1982) will present a commissioned project responding to this exhibition in February 2019.