Cy Twombly RIP

[Britalian]

83 in Rome hospital

 

[1969]

As a kid in North Carolina my parents knew a number of old students (and groupies) of the Black Mountain School. Twobly was probably my favorite artist if only for that reason.

 

[designprofessor]

Just saw some nice works in Chicago. Sad loss.

 

[Lord-Barrington]

Great artist whose work I always appreciated. RIP.

 

[venessian]

RIP indeed.

What a great artist. I had the luck to meet him once at a party outside of Rome, where he had designed the pool cabanas. He was fantastic. The Cy Twombly Pavilion at the Menil Collection is an amazing shrine.

I always thought that the piece on him by the great writer Arthur Danto in The Nation was brilliant (complete essay here):

Originally Posted by Arthur Danto; The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World

Sometime in midsummer I had an unusually instructive conversation with one of my more amusing cultural confidants, the writer Jim Holt. We were talking about the upcoming Cy Twombly exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, wondering what our responses would be. Jim said that for his part he was tired of apologizing for "all those elegant whispers." That, however, was not what I heard him say. I heard him say,"all those elephant whiskers," and I must say I was overwhelmed by the novelty and exactitude of the image. What one might think of as the archetypal Twombly painting formed in my imagination and there it was, exactly, a distribution of elephant whiskers across a largely empty space. "Elephant whiskers!" I exclaimed, about to compliment him on his felicitous trope when he repeated what he had actually said: "Elegant whispers." We congratulated ourselves on the fortuitous mishearing, almost as if we had been playing one of those Surrealist games in which an effort is made to flush surprising insights out of the unconscious by aleatory means. But it also left a question in my mind as to whether elegance especially belongs to the Twombly mode of address and touch. In fact the most vivid example of a Twombly I carry in my memory is of a decidedly inelegant work.

....

 

[Britalian]

^^thanks for link

and

 

[AnotherOne]

Whenever I go to Houston I visit the Twombly Gallery. His paintings are so beautiful and sentimental. Back home I'm always surprised by how poorly the paintings look in a book. The paintings just seem to lose all their lushness.