YOU DON'T LIKE SQUIGGLES?

 I don’t know too many people who do like squiggles! In fact at the exhibition the other day there were more cynical remarks coming from spectators than anything else. The Cy Twombly (1928-2011) retrospective had just opened and there were very few people. A younger generation than I had seen at the American Collection or even Magritte. My daughter came with me. She knew nothing about the artist in question, so I said nothing about him until we walked into the first gallery. Nothing is perhaps not the right word. I had told her that he was American, had lived for most of his life in Italy and was considered to be one of the most prolific American artists of the 20th century. "More than Picasso?" She asked. So I added the American artists... Her mouth opened wide in surprise when she saw the first painting…I don’t blame her. It was Gianni who introduced me to Twombly but until going to this exhibition, I had forgotten that he lived in Bassano, the same town as Gianni once did. 

I then took my iPhone and a first photo. There I showed Nicky what I could see: specific images and that is what I was looking for. If not that, how did Twombly use space. Immediately she began to look at pictures differently. We almost always liked the same and yet Nicky went much further in her description of a painting. That was fascinating as I had not seen what she had experienced. Isn’t that « Sharing »?

Cy Twombly emerged in the 1950s, developing a characteristic painting style of expressive drips and active, scribbled, and scratched lines. “My line is childlike but not childish,” he once said. “It is very difficult to fake…to get that quality you need to project yourself into the child's line. It has to be felt.”

The retrospective in question retraces a 60 year career. There are over 140 paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs drawn from public and private collections across the world.

Pierre Restany (24 June 1930 – 29 May 2003), was an internationally known French art critic and cultural philosopher. I think he defined Twombly’s work very well indeed.

« His hand writing is poetry, reportage, furtive gesture, sexual release, automatic writing, self-affirmation, self-abnegation too…Twombly’s writing has neither syntax or logic, but quivers with life, its murmur penetrating to the very depths of things. »

Here goes…I’ll write about how I see his work as we go along…

No title - (New York), 1954

Academy, 1955

No title (Rome), 1958

This was Nicky's introduction to Twombly. You can't see anything? Nonsense - there is a lady there on her back, looking at you

from 8 Odi di Orazio (series I), 1968

Not title (Camino Real, Vl, 2011

Camino Real (Vl) 2010

From the Coronation of Sesotris series

A view of the series

Râ' boat

Look inside the work. There is so much happeneing as if in an academy with people rushing around

From a little way off, this was a fan of beautiful red feathers

Wilder shores of love, 1985

Two of the four seasons done in 1993-1992

His sculptures all made of found material

Summer madness,  1990 - but don't you see the animal's head crowned with flowers?

Fifty days at Iliam, Partie l: Shield of Achilles, 1978

Petals of fire, 1989

There are different shades of colour hidden by writing and design: Nini's Painting, 1971

Nicky suddenly discovered her daughter's name : Swanie

Here I see a person on the left gazing at other people on the right

Another series but yes, there are two people conversing there

 Nine discoveries on Commodus (Part Vlll) 1963
These were done soon after the assasination of Kennedy. Bloody clotted paint... 

Still part of the series

Although this is called "The Vengeance of Achilles" when I saw it - "oh, Father Christmas is here"

Sperlonga collage, 1959

Sperlonga collage, 1959

Sperlonga collage, 1959

This series is quite beautiful 

Quarzazat, 1953

I know this well and it has always frightened me. A wire to keep the prisoners in and then Nicky turned suddenly and saw it. "How marvellous that is - the sea is rolling in with perfect waves" - I prefer that!

Volubilis, 1953 and yet there is a door to go through and what will we see on the other side?

No Title but done in Lexington in 1959 - there is a face in the middle looking at you

Lexington again in 1951 - but aren't they people with their arms around one another ? 

Of course there are paintings that I like less than others. Twombly makes me ask the same question every time I see his work. Is this art? Now for me it is, but there are other things and signs to look for. This is not childish writing. Children apply themselves to make their early handwriting as easy to read as possible. His work is not easy to read. I grant you that and for many people it will go on being "just squiggles' - I think today that I am beginning to see it better. Nicky did, first time around.

These below must be some of his last works - I don't have to see anything except an ongoing energy of colours which call out to me









The same energy as above and yet there is Pollock and memories of other artists in the Abstraction period.








Poppies, floating in the sky and behind an experimental writing











At once I saw jelly fish - in every one of them and yet this is one of the major painting cycles that punctuate his career, differeing from pure abstract. Inspired by the god Râ whose sun-boat traverses the heavens from dawn to dusk to the end of the night....the series starts with luminous canvases dominated by sunny yellow and red to close in it black and white...