Cy Twombly: Fifty Years Of Works On Paper. - Softcover

Twombly, Cy; Schama, Simon; Barthes, Roland

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0874271460 ISBN 13: 9780874271461

Publisher: Whitney Museum of Art, 2005

Synopsis

Cy Twombly's work realizes its most personal expression in his intimately sized drawings and paintings on paper. Finding inspiration as much in the forces of nature as in ancient epics and legend, and using the simplest of media - pencils, ballpoint pens, crayons, wall paint - he creates poetic and archaic worlds, usually in series and often as collages.
The eighty-four works in this retrospective, organized by the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, in 2003 to mark Twombly's seventy-fifth birthday, were collected from the artist's studio, and many have not been previously exhibited. Dating from between 1953 and 2002, the drawings embrace the entire career of one of the most important American artists alive today, from his early monotypes to the major mythological cycles of later years, revealing the many nuances of his aesthetic approach.

About this title

Review

When the Hermitage in St. Petersburg celebrated the city's 300th anniversary in 2003, they assembled a selection of 50 years of Cy Twombly's works on paper, coinciding with the artist’s seventy-fifth birthday. At first look, even the most savvy and well-heeled art lover is apt to think "my kid could do that," and there is a (very surface) bit of truth to this. Twombly, an American who moved to Rome in the 1950s, was obviously influenced by Jean Dubuffet's idea of art brut, as well as the work of Paul Klee, and of children. But it doesn't take long to see Twombly's genius. He created something very new with the pure gestures of abstract expressionism, and in this survey it's a joy to see the ways his work constantly changed, from adopting some of the formal strictures of minimalism in the 1970s to embracing vivid colors in the 1980s. Like the graffiti scratches (ancient and modern) that are perhaps Twombly’s greatest influence, it's very playful, often rather dirty work. Unlike graffiti, it's exceptionally labored over. Once you can decipher his scratchy line, you notice that the subtle interplay of words and images is matched by very few others, though the work of Raymond Pettibon and Nancy Spero do spring to mind. Assembled for the St. Petersburg's show's arrival at the Whitney Museum in New York City, this book is a joy. Simon Schalma's essay is ribald, terse and excellent, while Roland Barthes’ writing is, unsurprisingly, worth the price of the book alone. In a review for the New York Times of the show at the Whitney that this book accompanies, Holland Coter wrote that Twombly's early highly referential works are "as if Western cultural history was unfolding on the walls of a toilet stall." It's hard to think of higher praise. --Mike McGonigal

From the Inside Flap

Cy Twombly is undoubtedly the most sensitive mind among the greats of contemporary art. His work finds its most personal expression in the small, intimately sized drawings which he has from the very outset produced by way of accompaniment to his paintings: they not only reflect all the stages in the development of his painterly oeuvre but essentially also transcend it. Our book covers the major retrospective which the Hermitage has organized to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the City of St. Petersburg.

Edition details

• Publisher: Whitney Museum of Art
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0874271460
• ISBN 13: 9780874271461
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 159