The Essential Cy Twombly

Provides an authoritative overview of the artist's work, including his paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs.

Cy Twombly (1928-2011) created art that was remarkable for its versatility, sensitivity and originality. Throughout his career, he followed his own artistic pathway, independent from contemporary trends, and for a long time his work went unnoticed by a wider audience. By the time of his death in Rome, at the age of 83, he was internationally recognized as one of the greatest and most idiosyncratic artists of the 20th and early 21st century. This book provides an authoritative overview of Twombly's complex body of work, bringing together the most important of his paintings and painting cycles, as well as a selection of his drawings, sculptures and photographs.

Luscious reproductions of more than 50 of Twombly's paintings, drawings and little-known sculptures, along with classical works of art, tell the story of an American abstractionist's poetical dialogue with antiquity Cy Twombly's first visit to Italy as a young man ignited a lifelong passion for classical culture that is everywhere present in his art. Painted canvases, works on paper and small-scale sculptures reveal the historical soul of Twombly's abstract compositions. Taking on myths and heroes as personal guides, he created a psychologically complex dialogue with the visual and literary art of antiquity. This sumptuously illustrated publication reproduces a carefully chosen selection of the artist's paintings, drawings and sculptures alongside works of classical antiquity, including a number from his personal collection. Illuminating essays by leading scholars and writers, including Anne Carson, Jennifer R. Gross, Brooke Holmes and Mary Jacobus, explore the often enigmatic engagement of Twombly's art with the world of the past. Cy Twombly(1928-2011) was born in Lexington, Virginia, and lived and worked in New York in the early 1950s and at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. After traveling around North Africa, Spain and Italy, he settled in Rome, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION: TWOMBLY'S BOOKS -- 1 MEDITERRANEAN PASSAGES: RETROSPECT -- 2 PSYCHOGRAM AND PARNASSUS: HOW (NOT) TO READ A TWOMBLY -- 3 TWOMBLY'S VAGUENESS: THE POETICS OF ABSTRACTION -- 4 ACHILLES' HORSES, TWOMBLY'S WAR -- 5 ROMANTIC TWOMBLY -- 6 THE PASTORAL STAIN -- 7 PSYCHE: THE DOUBLE DOOR -- 8 TWOMBLY'S LAPSE -- POSTSCRIPT: WRITING IN LIGHT -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX

**A New York Times Editors Choice** "The most substantive biography of the artist to date...propulsive, positive and persuasive."—Holland Cotter, New York Times Book Review **PEN / Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Finalist** **A Marfield Prize Finalist** Cy Twombly was a man obsessed with myth and history—including his own. Shuttling between stunning homes in Italy and the United States where he perfected his room-size canvases, he managed his public image carefully and rarely gave interviews. Upon first seeing Twombly’s remarkable paintings, writer Joshua Rivkin became obsessed himself with the mysterious artist, and began chasing every lead, big or small—anything that might illuminate those works, or who Twombly really was. Now, after unprecedented archival research and years of interviews, Rivkin has reconstructed Twombly’s life, from his time at the legendary Black Mountain College to his canonization in a 1994 MoMA retrospective; from his heady explorations of Rome in the 1950s with Robert Rauschenberg to the ongoing efforts to shape his legacy after his death. Including previously unpublished photographs, Chalk presents a more personal and searching type of biography than we’ve ever encountered, and brings to life a more complex Twombly than we’ve ever known.

The Centre Pompidou will present a major retrospective of the work of American artist Cy Twombly bringing together works from public and private collections around the world. The comprehensive showcase will be structured around three major cycles: Nine Discourses on Commodus, 1963, Fifty Days at Iliam, 1978, and Coronation of Sesostris, 2000, and will span the artist's entire career, from his first works in the early 1950s to his last paintings. Presented chronologically and featuring some 140 paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures, the exhibition will provide what the Centre Pompidou describes as a clear picture of an extraordinarily rich body of work which is both intellectual and sensual. In addition to emphasizing the importance of series and cycles in Twombly's practice, through which he reinvented history painting, the exhibition will also highlight the artist's close relationship with Paris.

Along with his celebrated drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs, Cy Twombly has left an imposing body of graphic work as well. As early as 1984, the Berlin-based art writer and Twombly expert, Heiner Bastian, compiled the first catalogue raisonné of the artist's printed graphics which has been out of print for 18 years. Now back in print for the first time, this new edition of the catalogue raisonné has been updated and includes the graphic works Twombly created since 1984 until his death in 2011. Cy Twombly's graphic oeuvre is characterized by a variety of graphic and printing techniques. Along with monotypes, etchings, lithographs, and silkscreens, the artist tested his expertise using offset lithographs and the combination of various print and reproduction techniques. The scholarly portion of the catalogue features 96 works created between 1952 and 2008, all of them illustrated in full color.

A visual celebration of one of the most renowned artists of our time, along with the extraordinary Gallery he helped to create to showcase his work American artist Cy Twombly (1928-2011) created paintings and sculptures that defied conventional classification. In his works, Twombly incorporated a wide variety of elements, from scrawls and calligraphic marks to text from poetry and mythology. Opening in 1995, the Cy Twombly Gallery at the Menil Collection was designed by Renzo Piano and has become a pilgrimage destination for the artist's avid admirers. The product of close collaboration between the Menil, Twombly, and the Dia Center for the Arts, the Gallery is one of the most extraordinary representations of any single 20th-century artist. Twombly chose the art that would be featured and worked closely with the builders to create the most appropriate venue for its presentation. This sumptuous volume showcases thirty-three paintings and eleven sculptures, including an immense 13 x 52-foot painting. Featuring large-scale, close-up details of many of the works, the book looks at paint, plaster, paintings, sculptures, and the "cues" that Twombly gave in his art about this special collection. Published in association with the Twombly Foundation and the Menil Collection