20 Artistic Collaborations That Created Something Neither Could Alone

Key facts

• Lennon and McCartney agreed as teenagers that every song either wrote would be credited to both, covering roughly 180 songs.
• Picasso and Braque invented Cubism between 1908 and 1914, visiting each other's studios almost daily.
• Gilbert and Sullivan wrote 14 comic operas between 1871 and 1896, with the Savoy Theatre built specifically for their work.
• Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! in 1943 integrated songs, story, and dance, running 2,212 performances.
• Stravinsky's Rite of Spring score and Nijinsky's choreography caused a riot at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on May 29, 1913.
• Buñuel and Dalí's Un Chien Andalou (1929) was made with a rule that any rationally explainable idea was thrown out.
• Cage and Cunningham collaborated for 50 years by composing music and dance separately, coordinating only duration.
• Fitzgerald and Armstrong recorded three albums together for Verve in the late 1950s, including Ella and Louis (1956).
• Davis and Evans created orchestral albums like Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy and Bess (1958), and Sketches of Spain (1960).
• John and Taupin have written songs for over 50 years with Taupin writing lyrics first and John setting them to music alone.
• Bowie and Eno made three albums—Low, Heroes, Lodger—known as the Berlin Trilogy (1977-1979).
• Byrne and Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981) replaced vocals with found voices from radio broadcasts.
• Queen and Bowie's Under Pressure (1981) was created in an unplanned jam session in Montreux, Switzerland.
• Run-DMC and Aerosmith's Walk This Way (1986) reached No. 4 on Billboard Hot 100 and revitalized both acts.
• Warhol and Basquiat produced over 100 joint canvases in the mid-1980s, exhibited at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in 1985.
• Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin in 1995, drawing millions of visitors in two weeks.
• Abramović and Ulay's 12-year partnership included works like Rest Energy (1980) and ended with The Lovers (1988).
• Gorillaz, created by Albarn and Hewlett, debuted in 2001 as a virtual band with four animated members.
• Plant and Krauss's Raising Sand (2007) won five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year.
• Glass and Wilson's Einstein on the Beach premiered at the Avignon Festival in July 1976, running 4.5 hours with no intermission.