Cy Twombly Retrospective At The Tate June 19 - September 14, 2008
Michael Stravato for the New York Times
Cy Twombly at Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston in front of the gallery’s largest painting, “Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor.”
I would love to see this retrospective, unfortunately I have no plans for being in London at this point.
The Retrospective spans 14 rooms in the Tate Museum, in chronological order.
I read about The retrospective in Two Coats of Paint. Sharon Butler quotes David Cohen of the New York Sun:
“In room after room, this survey offers spare yet dynamic canvases, or cruddy yet evocative sculpture. However nonchalant his painterly marks may seem, they are taut and expressive nonetheless. Scatological as they can be in their oozing and dribbling, his paintings are unfailingly elegant. There is a dichotomy in Mr. Twombly’s work between the verbal and the nonverbal: Writing is key to his work - often there is text scribbled into his canvases, and titles manifest connections with poetry - but equally vital is a sense that splodges and gestures form an arcane system of pre-verbal expression. This juggling act, sustained over half a century, is essential to Mr. Twombly’s achievement. But it also accounts for his rocky ride in terms of esteem. Because he taps reserves of brutalism and classicism in equal measure, he is apt to appear too effete to one camp, too grubby to the other. The combination of rough textures and smooth literary references may well account for his greater success in Europe than in America.”
A couple more pieces
Wilder Shores of Love,1985
Leda and the Swan
