Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American
This is called the Shield of Achilles (1978).
This painting hangs just outside a fairly sizeable room of fairly sizeable white canvases covered with scribbles, names, partial names, whorls and amoeba-like blobs.
The room is dedicated entirely to Cy Twombly’s Fifty Days at Iliam. (The word Ilium the artist changed to Iliam, to have the ‘a’ refer to Achilles).
Fifty Days at Iliam, in ten parts; 1978; oil, crayon and graphite on canvas.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. Philadelphia Museum of Art
The room was installed in 1989 at the Philadelphia Art Museum. People are always trying to add their marks to the scribbles of these paintings. Who can blame them?
One part of Fifty Days at Iliam; 1978; oil, crayon and graphite on canvas
Anyone can scribble and many do. In kindergarten.
One part of Fifty Days at Iliam; 1978; oil, crayon and graphite on canvas
Only adults, of course, go on to give their scribbles portentous names.
And other adults yet to develop ‘meaning’ for and theories about this ‘art’.
Victory, edition 5 of 6,conceived 1987, cast 2005, patinated bronze. Promised gift of the Cy Twombly Foundation to the Philadelphia Art Museum. On display 2016/2017
You don’t know what this story is from looking at this work. You don’t know who is divine and who is a mortal.
One part of Fifty Days at Iliam; 1978; oil, crayon and graphite on canvas
You don’t know anything about anything except that someone marked these canvases with random marks that mean little either by themselves or in relation to any other marks.
One part of Fifty Days at Iliam; 1978; oil, crayon and graphite on canvas
You don’t think the marks mean anything because they are like those of a child set down at a table with paper and crayons and encouraged to try his/her hand.
And this is supposed to be the story of Achilles’ exploits and heroism?
One part of Fifty Days at Iliam; 1978; oil, crayon and graphite on canvas
The artist lost an opportunity to illustrate one of the great stories of the way men interact and behave in the world and with their gods:
fighting, scheming, loving, praying, killing, boasting, grieving, performing rituals, persisting, surviving, conquering, dying.
One of the heartland stories of the ‘West’ which Cy Twombly reduced to drivel.
Academy, 1955, oil-based house paint, pencil, coloured pencil, and pastel.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. MOMA, NY
TBD.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. Philadelphia Art Museum. On display 2016/2017
Rome
Untitled (Rome), 1982, oil pant, wax crayon and graphite on canvas.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. On loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2016
Untitled (Rome), 1961, oil-based house paint, oil paint, wax crayon and graphite on canvas.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. Philadelphia Art Museum
Untitled (Rome), 1976, bronze
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. Philadelphia Museum of Art
Untitled (Rome), edition 2 of 3, 1997, bronze.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American.
Promised gift of the Cy Twombly Foundation to the Philadelphia Art Museum. On view 2016/2017
Synopsis of a Battle, 1968, oil-based house paint and waxed crayon on canvas.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. Corcoran Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
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Untitled, 1970, oil-based house paint and crayon on canvas.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. MOMA, NY
The artist sat on the shoulders of someone who ran up and down the length of the canvas so that the artist could achieve this.
Untitled, 2005, plaster, paint, wood, metal, paper, cloth, twine and pencil.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. MOMA, NY
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The Dutch Golden Age
Dutch Interior, 1962, wax, crayon, lead pencil and oil on canvas.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. MOMA, NY.
The painting’s title refers to Dutch painting of the 17th century and is also, according to the museum, an homage to the Spanish Surrealist, Joan Miro, who painted a series referring to these same Dutch paintings.
This is a painting of the Dutch Golden Age.
Leisure Time in an Elegant Setting, oil on canvas, 1663-65.
Pieter de Hooch, 1629-1684, Dutch. Robert Lehman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Diffuse light from the window at left highlights the dominant warm reds. The walls are tooled, gilded leather.
By what mysterious means has this de Hooch been diluted into a disorder of meaningless lines to be hanging, now, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York?
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In 1994, Cy Twombly painted the Four Seasons for a retrospective of his work at MOMA, NY.
The Four Seasons: Spring, 1993, synthetic polymer paint, oil, house paint, pencil and crayon on canvas.
Gift of Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American to MOMA, NY in 1994
The Four Seasons: Summer, 1994, synthetic polymer paint, oil, house paint, pencil and crayon on canvas.
Gift of Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American to MOMA, NY in 1994
The Four Seasons: Autumn, 1993, synthetic polymer paint, oil, house paint, pencil and crayon on canvas.
Gift of Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American to MOMA, NY in 1994
The Four Seasons: Winter, 1993, synthetic polymer paint, oil, house paint, pencil and crayon on canvas.
Gift of Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American, to MOMA, NY in 1994
What is all this about?
A determined man, for sure.
This artist was one of the boys from young. He hung out with them. He was taught by them. They helped him.
They: the ones who became giants on the American artistic scene.
Twombly was fortunate to have been their friends at the start of their experimentations in art: Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, the young Turks who, with Andy Warhol and others, loosened the grip of the Abstract Expressionists on the North American art world and expanded the ways and means and products of their work.
For richer, for poorer. For enlivening or for deadening.
Untitled Drawing, 1954, gouache, wax crayon and coloured pencil on paper.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. ?location
Twombly had Ben Shahn, Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline as teachers. It was Motherwell who organized his first solo show in 1951 in New York. Twombly was 23.
Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns (96 this year) were and are the most influential North American artists of their age. Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly, lovers for a while, shared studio space in NY in the 1950s before their stock began to climb.
And if the brilliance of the Rauschenberg sun was not enough to gild his fortunes, Cy Twombly had, after he migrated to Italy in 1959 and married, a devoted and well-connected publicist in his wife.
Tiznit, 1953, white lead, oil-based housepaint, wax crayon and lead pencil on canvas.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. MOMA, NY
The painting is named for a Moroccan village. The forms come from sketches Twombly made in the Pigorini Museum of Natural History and Ethnography.
First exhibited in 1953 with works of Robert Rauschenberg with whom Cy Twombly was then romantically involved.
Leda and the Swan, 1962, oil, pencil and crayon on canvas.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. MOMA, New York
Just an unreadable mess.
Once he also had the interest of art critics to help evolve the theory of his work, it was a smallish step to the commitment of major institutions and collectors to buy and hang this work. As with any artist.
Et voila!
In 1989, the year in which the Philadelphia Art Museum dedicated a room to the permanent exhibition of Iliam, the artist’s paintings reached $1 million a painting at auction.
Now, as night follows day, there is such vested interest to preserve its monetary value that, for instance, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, has been made a beneficiary of Cy Twombly’s sculptures.
It has even been noted that these sculptures raised nobody’s interest in the 1980s when they were made.
Of course not!
They raise interest now because the artist’s stock has risen and risen over the decades. Not because something magical has happened to improve their lumpen quality.
Anabasis, edition 1 of 4, 2011, bronze.
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American.
Promised gift of the Cy Twombly Foundation to the Philadelphia Art Museum. On view 2016/2017.
Anabasis is the name of a history written in 370 BCE by Xenophon describing the effort of King Cyrus the Younger to capture the Persian throne.
This was the artist’s last sculpture.
I don’t know how reducing foundational myths and history of the West to scribbles and ugly sculpture is valuable except in the very, very narrow sense of the bank balances of a tiny group of people in the art world.
Cy Twombly’s skill has been to sell this nonsense as art.
The Cy Twombly room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art was rehung and new sculpture acquisitions were installed on the occasion of the loan of the main works to the Beaubourg in the winter of 2016/2017.
The paintings are Shades of Night, 1977 and 1978, oil paint and graphite, some with oil stick also, on paper.
They belong to the Cy Twombly Foundation and were on loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
It has to be remembered, also, that, as the London Guardian reported in 2019, American museums devoted only 11% of their acquisitions and 14% of exhibitions to women artists in the whole decade ending 2019. Even less for artists of colour.
Even less in the period in which Cy Twombly’s star was rising: 1960-2000.
Would a woman have gotten away with proposing scribbles as art?
The artist gave very rare interviews. In one, he explained: “It’s more like I’m having an experience than making a picture.”
Often, he said, he finished a painting in a state of ecstasy and would need to rest in bed for two days.
It seems that it is this ecstatic narcissism which is the subject of Twombly’s work: an expression of the private experiences of one man dabbling with our common history and myths without enlightening them. A narcissism which he displayed publicly without a qualm.
This is the narcissism which is hollowing out so much of our public life. This is one person’s private world and private language presented as a valid and meaningful representation of our cultural values;
when for many of us this is an example of the world-thinning vacuity of our age.
Untitled, 1989, drawing paper, tracing paper, shredded drawing paper, glue, acrylic, wax crayon, pencil
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American. ?location
The ceiling of the Salle des Bronzes, the Louvre
So widely esteemed is Twombly’s work that he was chosen (the third such) to paint a modern decorative work for the Louvre, Paris.
Twombly’s work is a ceiling completed in 2010 in the Salle des Bronzes in one of the oldest parts of the museum.
Ceiling of the Salle des Bronzes, Louvre Museum, 2010. Paint on canvas adhered to the ceiling. Photo from the net
Cy Twombly, 1928-2011, American
The heavenly blue is the Aegean or the skies above it. The disks are meant to pay homage to classical Greek sculpture. The names of the seven most well known classical Greek sculptors are written on the ceiling.
This is, in my view, is as slight, pretentious, and diminishing to its subject matter as any work by Cy Twombly.
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