The Bride and the Bachelors

Calvin Tomkins's account of five artists who pursued what Robert Rauschenberg called the gap between art and life. It was first published in 1965 and appears here in a revised edition.

The chapters treat Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Jean Tinguely, Robert Rauschenberg and Merce Cunningham, drawing on interviews and first-hand contact with the artists. This edition adds new material on Jasper Johns and a preface by the author. It is a 484-page cloth hardcover in a dust jacket, published by Gagosian, which lists it as 2014.

Tomkins (1925-2026) joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 1960 and served as its art critic from 1980 to 1986. His other books include Off the Wall: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg (1980), Duchamp: A Biography (1996) and Lives of the Artists (2008).