Unfinished Twombly Sculpture

OK, just one more.

a photo of cy twombly's painting studio in gaeta with supplies as he left them on rickety tables, and an unfinished sculpture-like tower of boxes in the center. the view of the bay out the windows is washed out by the exposure. manfredi gioacchini fecit.
Manfredi Gioacchini’s photo of Twombly’s studio in Gaeta, a corner room with views of the bay and the city scape, but those are washed out, so look at this sculpture-like stack on the rickety table.

What’s popping out to me as I keep looking at Manfredi Gioacchini’s photos of Twombly’s Gaeta house & studio is the sculptures everywhere, and things that look like sculptures. It’s the sculpture-like objects here, the things that look like they could become Twombly sculptures, that seem to show him thinking and living with objects in a certain way, not just sitting down and making them.

a detail from manfredi gioacchini's photo showing the unfinished sculpture in cy twombly's studio, a yellow round box of harrods savory biscuits, upside down on a white painted wood box. a green-topped pie plate looking thing is on that, wht these glove and stick, or rib and pouch or who knows what fetishy little objects are perched on top
a detail of the Harrod’s tin, the little things on top, img;

What got me thinking about all this was the little tower of white-painted wood box and upside-down Harrod’s biscuit box in Twombly’s corner studio. When Gioacchini photographed it, it had what I thought were paint brushes in cloths, but which turned out to be little fetish-like pouch & stick combos.

a screenshot of cy dear where the clutter of paint and brushes and an unfinished sculpture comprised of a little ziggurat of wood box, round biscuit tin, plate, and two spare rib-like plastery objects fill sawhorse tables in cy twombly's studio while the bay and fortress of gaeta are centered in the open window
me forced to take a photo of Cy Dear on my television like a savage to show that this unfinished sculpture-like object is still there in Twombly’s studio in 2017 onward

They’re also there in Cy Dear, which was released in 2019, but shot beginning, I think, in 2017. So perhaps a sculpture left unfinished in a studio that seems left largely as it was at Twombly’s death. I had somehow figured Gioacchini’s photos were from 2009, but it makes little sense that the studio would be untouched for two years before Twombly’s death. Now it looks like a deleted tweet announcing the photos came in November 2020, so three years after the documentary, not a decade before. The unfinished sculpture was still there, still unfinished.

Manfredi Gioacchini | Cy Twombly Gaeta [manfredigioacchini]
Gioacchini’s new book Grand Tour, published Oct. 2024 by Quodlibet, includes the Gaeta photos [manfredigioacchini]