catalogue by the London rare book dealer Reed Sims
In the fall of 1979 Cy Twombly traveled through the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, which seems unexpected, though probably not as unexpected as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December. The suite of works on paper inspired, we’re told, by this trip, Five Days Wait at Jianyuguan, was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1980. Twombly also published a little artist book of the same name, a portfolio of sixteen mounted reproductions, in an edition of 50.
Jianyuguan, or Jianyu Pass, is a fortress at the western end of the Great Wall, , and the Silk Road’s historic gateway to China. For Chinese people, meanwhile, Jianyuguan evokes exile, where the desert awaits those expelled through the “gate to hell.”
Nothing in Twombly’s chronology or the texts for the Biennale works make mention of the artist going into China, and I cannot imagine a less plausible route into China for an American artist in 1979 than traveling overland from Khazakhstan, across the Gobi Desert, to Jianyuguan. The westbound route is even less plausible, and not just because what lay on the other side, Xinjiang province, was now a part of China.
It’s safe to assume, then, that Twombly was not the one doing the waiting. So this title, and perhaps all the works, reference a literary source, perhaps an adventurer’s travelogue from a bygone era. The titles of the various works in the portfolio do sound like captions: “Uygur taking tea on arrival”; “Harem”; “Leaving the land of men”; “Preparing for departure.” So maybe Twombly was referencing a set of images or illustrations.
And speaking of preparing for departure: the Jianyuguan works will be reunited for the first time since Venice, and the artist’s book will be reissued in facsimile (of a facsimile), for an exhibition next month at Gagosian’s 980 Madison gallery. It seems likely that this will be the last exhibition in this soon-to-be-bygone space, as the building will become the headquarters of the Bloomberg Foundation.
[day after update: Claudio traced the Reed Sims example to the Paris estate auction of dealer and friend of Cy Robert William “Willie” Burke, where it sold for EUR1529. Nice return on a four-month investment.]
January 24, 2025 Update: .the exhibition is open. The facsimile is released—in an edition of 500—as is a catalogue/folio. And an account by Nicola Del Roscio of the Russia/Afghanistan leg of the trip with the artist and ten unnamed Sicilians, presented at a 2012 Twombly symposium at the University of Cologne, and published in 2014 in the proceedings, Cy Twombly: Image, Text, Paratext, is online. It sounds precarious in the extreme. Del Roscio mentions several sculptures Twombly made in response to the Afghan trip, after the Russian invasion. But there is no mention of Jianguyuan.
More interesting, perhaps, actually extraordinary, is Thierry Greub’s project to index and map out all of Twombly’s inscribed poetic and literary references throughout his career, tracking his volume, sources, and shifts therein. One work cited as evidence of Twombly’s engagement in the 1980s with Arab poets is the flagship work for this Gagosian show, a 1986 acrylic on wood titled Paesaggio, which contains a quote from the 10th century poet al Ma’arri.
[February 2025 UPDATE: Five Day Wait has arrived, it is beautiful, bound and cased, but very slight, a slim volume of visual verse, with a tipped in plate per page, and the works list, and the colophon, and that’s it.]
Cy Twombly opens 23 January 2025 at Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue [gagosian]