Jacobus Mary - Reading Cy Twombly: poetry in paint

Advance praise for

READING CY TWOMBLY: POETRY IN PAINT

This is a beautiful and challenging book. Mary Jacobus takes us into the heart of Cy Twomblys practice, his reading, editing, remembering, and remaking of poetry from Homer and Virgil to Rilke and Paz. In doing so, she illuminates Twombly in new and remarkable ways. I loved it.

EDMUND DE WAAL, artist and author of The Hare with Amber Eyes

In this brilliantly erudite and illuminating study, Mary Jacobus, who is in the front rank of contemporary critics, addresses the languages of paint as well as poetry. As she investigates how Twomblys use of quotation both complements and immensely deepens the power of his visual images, she takes us right to the heart of his doubly articulate genius.

ANDREW MOTION, UK Poet Laureate, 19992009

The scrawled quotations, ruins of mythic poetry, and trailing verbal scribbles in Cy Twomblys work have fired Mary Jacobus to shape an enraptured yet scrupulously precise conversation with the artists imaginative world. Her deep literary knowledge, fine close readings, subtle psychoanalytical insights, and sheer sensuous delight in paint and color and stroke and rhythm combine here to create a rare and beautiful work of aesthetic philosophy.

MARINA WARNER, author of Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights

Many who are not art historians have written about Cy Twombly, but precious few with Mary Jacobuss rigor or fresh perspective. Her examination of Twomblys annotated personal library has turned up revelatory details about his practices of reading, notating, and editing; the sometimes quite literal proximity of book to canvas; and more. Jacobus has done profound work and her book is enormously enriching.

KATE NESIN, author of Cy Twomblys Things

Illuminating and wide-ranging, this is a very significant book. Mary Jacobuss access to Cy Twomblys annotated personal library enables her to speak with unprecedented authority on the literary sources that the artist used.

STEPHEN BANN, author of Distinguished Images

READING CY TWOMBLY

Detail from Cy Twombly, The Rose (Part I), 2008. Gaeta. Acrylic on four wooden panels, 99 291 in. (252 740 cm). Gagosian Gallery. Cy Twombly Foundation. Image courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

Reading
CY
TWOMBLY

POETRY IN PAINT

MARY JACOBUS

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON & OXFORD

Copyright 2016 by Princeton University Press

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press

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In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press

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All Rights Reserved

Frontispiece: Detail from Cy Twombly, The Rose (Part I), 2008. Gaeta. Acrylic on four wooden panels, 99 291 in. (252 740 cm). Gagosian Gallery. Cy Twombly Foundation. Image courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

Page xii: Gaeta: A Photo Essay. Courtesy the artist; Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New York.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jacobus, Mary, author.

Title: Reading Cy Twombly : poetry in paint / Mary Jacobus.

Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015038608 | ISBN 9780691170725 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Twombly, Cy, 19282011Criticism and interpretation.

Classification: LCC ND237.T87 J33 2016 | DDC 709.2dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038608

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Garamond Premier Pro

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in China

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

I draw these letters

as the day draws its images

and blows over them and does not return

Yo dibujo estas letras

como el da dibuja sus imgenes

y sopla sobre ellas y no vuelve

OCTAVIO PAZ, Writing (Escritura),
trans. Eliot Weinberger

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN painting and poetry in Twomblys work goes back to the beginning of his career, when one of his early teachers wrote that he was set to become a poet in paint, and that it will be a strong poetry as he is not easy changed from his purposes. The phrase poet in paint has a history of its own. It echoes the words used by Charles Baudelaire, who described Delacroix (the epitome of nineteenth-century modernity) as a poet in painting. What does it mean to call an artist a poet in paint?or, for that matter, what does it mean to bring poetry into painting and drawing, as Twomblys artistic practice does? While painting has ways to speak about itself without the intercession of language, Twomblys persistent engagement with poetry can be seen, among other things, as a way to expand paintings reach. An implicit claim made by this book is that poetry forms part of Twomblys solution to the dilemmas facing twentieth-century modern art. Reading Twombly, in the sense of paying close attention to the words he used and the poetry he quoted, acknowledges the work done by linguistic signs as figural elements in a predominantly visual medium. Twomblys lifelong love of poetry can be traced back to his formative years as an artist and continued to shape the way he worked throughout his career. He was himself a reader.

From the outset, the work of Cy Twombly (19282011) attracted the attentionand prompted the eloquenceof a number of distinguished writers, poets, and critics. I am indebted both to their writings and to more recent art historical work that has helped to inform and enlarge my understanding of Twomblys painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography, and the contexts in which they were made. Kirk Varnedoes catalogue essay for the MoMA retrospective of 1994 laid down a blueprint for future scholarship, meticulously documenting Twomblys evolution as an artist. Richard Leemans 2005 monograph included close attention to literary elements in Twomblys work; I have profited from his wide-ranging critical account. Nicholas Cullinans essays for the catalogue of the Tate Modern Cy Twombly Retrospective, Cycles and Seasons (2008), are richly informative, along with the insights and scholarship in Cullinans catalogue for the 2011 Dulwich Gallery pairing of Twombly and Poussin. Heiner Bastians magisterial six-volume Catalogue Raisonn of Twomblys paintings has provided an invaluable resource. The ongoing Catalogue Raisonn of the drawings, edited by Nicola Del Roscio, illuminates the extent and importance of Twomblys lifelong involvement with drawing and reveals much about his working habits. Kate Nesin has valuably directed attention to the sculptureTwomblys poesis in another mediumas an element that spans both his early and his later career. Exhibitions, essays, and books have given increasing visibility to Twomblys photography. Specific acknowledgments will be found in my text and notes; but in a book whose writing spanned half-a-dozen years, I have learned more than I can easily acknowledge from the many people who have written illuminatingly about Twomblys art. My own approachthat of a literary critichas been to focus on the role of poetry, translation, and writing, in the hope that reading Cy Twombly will offer a new lens through which to view his work, as well as being potentially transferable to other artists and media.