Tag: cy twombly

Estate Of Cameron Rowland

a white spiral bound booklet with the small title at the top,dia art foundation real estate 1974-2024, sits on a festive turquoise oilcloth placemat on a pine tabletop

I finally got a copy of Estate (2024), Cameron Rowland’s publication for their Dia exhibition Properties. The book also has the title, Dia Art Center Real Estate 1974-2024, and it’s a pageturner. It includes both acquisitions and dispositions, which, for Dia, is like half the story.

And while I knew the general narrative around conflicts, like the whole Judd/Marfa/Chinati mess; and the never-quite-permament permanent home for LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela’s Mela Foundation; and the way the building that’s now The Kitchen was originally going to be for Robert Whitman, seeing it play out in chronological, site-by-site transactional detail is still fascinating.

And then there are some surprises. Lke, I knew about buying thousands of acres within sight of Lightning Field, but I did not know Dia’s acquired 520 acres around Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, too. And I don’t think I’d ever heard about the Cy Twombly Museum, for which Dia bought a 3-story, beaux-arts building at 324 West 23rd St in 1980. Twombly had shown at Heiner Friedrich’s gallery since 1964. And in 1978 he showed Fifty Days at Iliam at the Lone Star Foundation, a de Menil/Friedrich joint for purchasing art that later consolidated with/into Dia, so I can see it happening.

a 1911 three story beaux arts building of limestone on west 23rd st in chelsea, nyc, has two corinthian columns with gold capitals and a pleasant flat facade otherwise. then there is a horrible five story post modern brick condo addition on top of it with dark cave-like balconies set into it, and a weird peaked roofline. there is a citibank on the ground level, with its associated blue awnings everywhere, via streeteasy
The Cy Twombly Museum (RIP), 1980-86, 324 W 23, via Streeteasy

I guess it all imploded in 1983, with the Marfa suit. Friedrich and Dia were burning through Philippa de Menil’s Schlumberger shares, and in 1985 her mother Dominique staged an institutional intervention. The family took over Dia and put Philippa’s inheritance in a trust.

Dia ended up selling the not-Twombly Museum in 1986. (They bought it for $550k, and sold it for $1.675m. In 1988 it got turned into a horrible-looking condo tower with a Citibank.) To ease Twombly’s loss, Dia gave him a show in 1988 in Bridgehampton instead. The series of green paintings Twombly made in 1988 for Venice were conceived as a permanent installation, and the Menil, which opened in 1987, eventually came through. All in all, a surprisingly coherent moment. A Twombly Museum on 23rd St. would have been amazing, though, ngl.

Anyway, what’s also interesting is what is not included in Dia’s real estate portfolio, namely the Spiral Jetty and Depreciation, Rowland’s own 2018 project in Edisto, SC. Dia does own Spiral Jetty the artwork, but not the lakebed land, which is, of course, leased from the State of Utah. Ask me how I know. As for Depreciation, when Rowland acquired the one-acre site of former plantation and reparation land, he placed the title in a non-profit company he manages. Dia has a longterm stewardship agreement with the artist. But unlike any other art-related Dia property, it is meant to not be visited.

Cameron Rowland: Dia Art Foundation Real Estate, 1974-2024, $10 [diaart.org]
Previously, related: Property Art
One Acre And Dia Mule
Rowland cameos in The Steve McQueen Bass Symposium

Codex Twombly

I have been waiting since February, when greg.org hero Jack sent along the link to the Master Drawings Symposium, for video of this year’s Ricciardi Prize lecture by Giovanni Lusi. I finally watched it, and it’s great.

screenshot of a horst photo of cy twombly's bookshelf with a gerhard richter grisaille portrait of a lady's head on the floor next to a bust of a caesar. to the right are four books of old master artworks giovani lusi identified from their spines in the photo.
While everyone else was distracted by the Richter, Giovanni Lusi was reading the spines of Twombly’s bookshelf. Screenshot from his 2026 Drawing Masters Symposium lecture via vimeo

Of course, anyone who reconstructs the period library of Cy Twombly by analyzing the spines on a bookshelf in the 1966 Vogue Horst photoshoot is going to have my attention. Lusi’s work goes beyond the circumstantial to trace Twombly’s early, formative engagement in Rome with the works of Old Masters—in this case, Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and codices.

a slide from giovanni lusi's lecture on twombly and leonardo shows a page from codex atlantico covered with little diagrams, blocks of texts, and sketches. on the right is a twombly drawing with a less dense composition, but similarly filled by texts, crossed out texts, small sketches and diagrams, in a way that echoes leonardo's own ersatz composition.
Screenshot of a slide from Giovanni Lusi’s 2026 Drawing Masters Symposium lecture showing a page from Leonardo’s Codex Atlanticus and Twombly’s Delian Ode 55, 1961, which was shown in Geneva in 1963. The brochure has a collage of Twombly’s head peeking out from Leonardo’s beard. Incredible stuff.

Lusi locates specific references and connections between Twombly drawings and paintings, including unearthing gallery checklists that show works with original titles like, “About Leonardo.” But the most fascinating thing for me was the link between Twombly’s all-over text and diagram painting compositions and the packed, palimpsest content of a Leonardo codex. It’s a reference I imagine almost no one at the time would have suggested for a young contemporary painter—and apparently one which few Twombly observers have recognized since.

There’s much more to be understood about how Twombly worked, and whether he worked from encountering Old Master originals, or—as Lusi suggests—from studying them in reproduction. When he offhandedly identifies the paperback source of a set of Leonardo collages Twombly made in Captiva in 1968, it makes a strong case for an entire dissertation just on Twombly’s library.

[few minutes later update] Come for the Twombly X Leonardo, stay for Femke Speelberg’s introduction to a fascinating, monumental 15th century architectural rendering which is the centerpiece of a show at the Met right now.

PCy Twombly

artist cy twombly's draft card from april 29, 1946, when he was a high school senior in lexington virginia, filled out with his full government name edwin parker twombly jr, but signed edwin p/cy twombly with the p and c interposed, via familysearch dot org

I was just checking Cy Twombly’s childhood address yesterday by looking up his 1946 draft card on Familysearch, as one does, and saw his signature: Edwin PCy Twombly.

Did the high school senior standing in front of Mrs Beatrice McKenny Garth of the Rockbridge County Draft Board start to sign his government name, and then switch to Cy? Except Cy Twombly fits on the line. Did he sign his name, and Mrs Garth was like, “I am not writing this all out again, young man. Fix it.”?

The real thing I wonder is if Twombly hadn’t developed an art practice so infused by handwriting and line, and a writing style so intrinsic to that practice that his notes and letters often came to stand on their own as artistic objects, would I have ever even noticed?

Cy Twombly, Started At Silverwood

cy twombly 14 papers is a mostly square work where the top 70 or 80% of the sheet is dark smoky green grey, painted over orange-red and dark green, which peek out along the bottom edge. which is largely blank, a separate sheet of paper attached, with 14 papers and the artist's initials in red, sold at christie's in 2004
Cy Twombly, 14 Papers (Silverwood at 5130) [CR Cat. no. 210], 1985, April 24 85, gouache, watercolor, graphite and felt-tip pen on two attached sheets of paper, 22¾ x 22¼ in., sold at Christie’s in 2004 [update: Christie’s said this was 1983, because honestly, it says April 24 83. Nicolas’ CR says it’s 85, but I think that’s based on other 14 Papers drawings having a more distinct hat on the 5. This really does feel like a 3.]

I was confused by this Cy Twombly work on paper which I saw for the first time this morning via @paintedout via @octavio-world, and which sold at Christie’s in 2004. It was very similar to a Twombly that belonged to Emily Fisher Landau, and which sold at Sotheby’s in 2024.

the dark green dense brushwork form on the top two thirds of this cy twombly work on paper from 1985 has been joined to a mostly blank sheet on the lower third, which has the artist's inscription 14 papers and lexington and the date in red. sold at sothebys in 2024
Untitled (14 Papers from Silverwood), 1985 [Cat no. 212], signed CT Lexington VA Jun 24 85, oil, acrylic, wax crayon and graphite on paper, 22 by 22½ in. [UPDATE: Let’s be real, this looks like it says June 24 85. the CR says they’re all 24 Apr 85.]

First off, when were these made? Apr 24 1983 AND Apr 24 1985? When was Twombly in Lexington? His mother and sister were still there in the mid-80s, but not in Silverwood, and he didn’t have a house of his own there until 1994. Emily’s 14 Papers is not described as two joined sheets, but it clearly is. The Christie’s 14 Papers is not described as oil and acrylic, but it clearly is. Christie’s does feel right about the red felt tip pen, though?

[NEXT DAY GET REAL UPDATE] Thanks to greg.org hero Claudio Santambrogio for helping me to keep things real here. He first flagged my error about Christie’s error: in 2004 they dated their 14 Papers drawing to 1983, not, as I misremembered, as 1982. But from there we went through a whole series of exchanges about what is said about these drawings vs. what they actually say, and honestly, the situation is, as Claudio so neatly put it, “as messy as CT’s handwriting.” So I’ve added notes to the captions above, and at the end of the post below, to sort things out. When I get my hands on Yvon Lambert’s 1997 drawings CR, I’ll add that second/third semi-authoritative source.

Continue reading “Cy Twombly, Started At Silverwood”

Cy Twombly Sweater Set

a tall willowy cy twombly in a thickly knitted cream wool beanie and matching cowl neck sweater and dark trousers and dress shoes descends a flight of whitewashed greek steps with an expression at once pensive, wary, and somewhat zoned out, in this detail from a black and white photo taken by his then new wife and likely stylist tatiana franchetti, as published in stella honey in 2026
a photo by Tatiana Franchetti Twombly of her husband Cy in the late 1950s or early 1960s, clothes: the artists’ own, via reference-point

How the Cy Twombly Style Community can sleep on Maia Twombly’s book of Tatiana Franchetti Twombly’s photos knowing there are 99 other previously unknown photos in it, and 8900 negatives remaining in the queue? I have no idea.

Buy Stella Honey, photos by Tatia Franchetti Twombly [reference-point]
previously, related: Twombly & Twombly by Twombly
Three Photographs Presented in Chronological Order

Twombly & Twombly by Twombly

a black and white photo of a relatively calm flat beach in italy with a long, narrow sand castle of cake pan shaped pedestals with jagged, drizzled sand towers braces itself against the flat, gentle, but inexorably encroaching sea, a work by cy twombly and his four year old son alessandro, the photo by tatiana franchetti twombly
A destroyed Twombly & Twombly sand castle in Sperlonga, as photographed by Tatiana Franchetti Twombly and released by Trust Iris to the NYT on the occasion of Maia Twombly’s book of her grandmother’s photographs.

From the New York Times: “’That’s my first sculpture,’ Alessandro, who became an artist, told Maia. Father and son created this elaborate sand castle in 1963 on the beach in Sperlonga, which has been a resort in southern Italy since the time of the emperor Tiberius.”

News of a previously undocumented sculptural collaboration between Allesandro and Cy Twombly would normally be the lead story. But, of course, it was documented, and it is the documentation that here deserves attention.

Tatiana Franchetti Twombly, Cy’s wife, took thousands of photos over sixty years, including this one, on a beach in Sperlonga in 1963. Alessandro’s daughter Maia found the negatives in the house where Tatiana died in 2010. She is putting on a show in Rome in June, and has published just a hundred in a book, Stella Honey, Cy’s pet name for Tatiana. There are 18 in the Times.

It’s early to tell, but we might want to prepare for another, “Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Art” situation our art historical future as more photos are released.

Cy Twombly, From Intimate Angles [nyt]
Stella Honey, photos by Tatiana Franchetti Twombly, edited by Maia Twombly, is also available in a slipcased special edition with a numbered print [reference-point.uk]

The Wives of Genius Club

a top down photo of small flowers growing in dark soil: purple, red, pink/white, light blue, a 1992 work by felix gonzalez torres of alice b toklas and gertrude stein's grave, this img via christie's 2005
“Untitled” (Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein’s Grave, Paris), 1992, ed. 1/4+1AP plus some other prints now considered non-work, but which are conceptually very fecund, this one sold at Christie’s in 2005

One of the great surprises in the exhibition catalogue for Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Always To Return)—which I brought up to curators Charlotte Ickes and Josh T. Franco in our conversation yesterday—is the essay by Joshua Chambers-Letson about Felix’s 1992 photo of flowers, “Untitled” (Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein’s Grave, Paris). Chambers-Letson discusses the work as portraiture, and in the context it’s traditionally been seen in, of “queer death, queer grief, and queer love.” But then pivoting to the work as an affirmation of queer life, he proceeds to expand on Stein and Toklas’ relationship as a complicated but revolutionary and rather boldly open example of queer companionship in a hostile world.

Chambers-Letson traces the contours of Stein & Toklas’ relationship IRL and in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Its queerness stands as “the open secret at the heart of the book” in which Stein places Toklas “among the ‘wives of genius.'”

Continue reading “The Wives of Genius Club”

Cy Twombly Facsimile Objects

two polaroid sized prints on aluminum sit on a hand rubbed enzo mari autoprogettazione tabletop: a white peony against a dark background, and a section of a large painting with red blossom shapes of thinned acrylic that drip down like blood, in a studio. facsimile objects based on cy twombly photos, the one on the left with the peony is/was propped on the little urn and antlers combo holding twombly's ashes, which appears in the cy, dear documentary, on the top shelf of the foundation office in gaeta.
Cy Twombly Facsimile Objects CT1 and CT2, 2026, dye sublimation print on aluminum, 4.25 x 3.5 inches

I thought I’d try a little something, and then it turns out the minimum width for printing these is 4 inches, so I tried out two little somethings. I like them.

The thing about Twombly’s photos is that they’re rarely experienced as their original Polaroids; they’re either books–or, if you’re fancy—enlarged prints.

I think that’s changing a bit, but in the mean time, I wanted to see what they’re like at real size. They’re nice, and I could easily see why you’d want to collect’em all.

Cy Twombly Flower Arrangements

a 2011 photo of a 1998 cy twombly sculpture of a black colored bronze rose on top of a lumpy white rock stained with rust, atop a box neatly wrapped in fading purple now brownish velvet, with a cheaply engraved brass plaque on the face of the box, sitting on a white pedestal, probably in the dulwich picture gallery, the first place this sculpture was publicly exhibited.
Cy Twombly, That Which I Should Have Done, I Did Not Do, 1998, 36 x 37 x 27.5 cm, bronze, stone, velvet, box, brass, at Dulwich Picture Gallery via Independent

I’ve had the tabs open so long I can’t remember where I heard or from whom, but someone had made a big point about visiting Cy Twombly and seeing a sculpture in a bedroom that had never been seen, in a style that didn’t fit his typical style. It was a tacky plastic flower, painted black, on a rusty rock, on a velvet-covered box, with a plaque like from a bowling trophy.

the cover of cy twombly photographs written in his trademark scrawl on two tan bands above and below a blurry polaroid photo of a sculpture detail of a black bronze rose and a rusty spot on a speckled white stone
Cover, Cy Twombly Photographs, 1951-1999, 2002, Nicola Del Roscio, images via Gagosian Shop, which, obv there was a 1993 Matthew Marks exhibition catalogue of photos before this, but still

At first, I remember thinking, really? The 1998 sculpture on the cover of Twombly’s first monograph of photos, published in 2002? But that is a different experience. [Interesting, the sculpture is configured differently in photos inside.]

Continue reading “Cy Twombly Flower Arrangements”

Cy Twombly Froggie

a tacky porcelain frog, seated like cy twombly would sit on the bench outside the walmart near lexington, with his hands on his belly, sits on a white pedestal surrounded by other white pedestals in twombly's storefront studio. sally mann took this pic, and this is a screnshot from the ny public library talk excerpt about this photo, so the seo caption is cy twombly and froggie by sally man, live from the nypl

This screenshot from months ago was mis-saved into my research folder for an article I’m tryna finish, no idea why. But the story Sally Mann told about this photo is less interesting than the photo itself, and much less interesting than the fact that Twombly had this junk store froggie in his Lexington studio and called it Froggie. It’s in her Twombly photos book.

I think the frog is only like 3.5 inches tall.

[update: nvm, Tacita Dean photographed it too, and it is three apples tall.]

Cyhaus: Bela Lugosi’s Bed

the brightly lit salon of cy twombly and tatianna franchetti's apartment in rome has six whilte leather breuer wassily chairs around a large coffee table or perhaps it's a mattress, covered with a recently unfolded, unprimed cotton canvas. a twombly painting lies unstretched and unrolled on the lower fore edge of the composition. the green marble doorway on the right wall echoes the dark warhol painting of tuna fish cans on the left. the two windows on the back wall, on either side of a crushed galvanized steel john chamberlain sculpture, are open to the view of the via di monserrato. by ugo mulas, the hidden historian of 20th century art
Ugo Mulas, c. 1969/70, the Twombly/Franchetti salon in Rome, with Warhol and Chamberlain installed properly, and a Bolsena painting, off its stretcher and unrolled ON THE FLOOR WTF, via Cy Twombly Homes & Studios

We still live in a Cy Twombly world Horst built. His European dealers made their own versions of via di Monserrato to live in. And whether it’s to identify works in the background, or to copy the floor, we’re all left poring over the same few photos, a dozen or so slivers from which we try to construct some meaning, to conjure a view of a place and a moment. We make do with what history has left.

Except there’s more. Photographer Ugo Mulas was everywhere in the art world in the 1960s and 70s, taking pictures of everyone and where they worked and everything they made there. Mulas published a couple of books early on, hard to find and expensive; fact is, we haven’t really seen Mulas’s world or processed it. And it feels like every one of his thousands of photos could change Art History forever, yet his only apparent option is to try to sell a dozen of the aesthetic ones as editioned prints.

There are a dozen Ugo Mulas photos of c. 1969/70 via di Monserrato in the Cy Twombly Homes & Studios book, including the one above. There’s another photo of the same room in which the large table covered with an unprimed canvas looks like a mattress. In a third photo, there are instead two acrylic coffee tables covered with photos and art tchotchkes, so the mattress was a choice, or a moment.

Those spindly floor lamps are everywhere in Mulas’ Twombly photos, and nowhere in Horst’s. So is non-Twombly artwork. Warhol, Chamberlain, Johns, Alex Hay, Picasso, the Franchettis didn’t just have an artist in the family; they had direct access to Castelli’s backroom—and a guy who could get it for them wholesale.

But when I say every single Ugo Mulas photo could change Art History, this is what I mean:

a dramatically lit bed with a green velvet cover, green pillows, and a tan fur throw sits on a green wall-to-wall carpet, lit by two chrome floorlamps. behind the bed, a warhol screenprint of a promotional still from bela lugosi's dracula about to bite the neck of a swooning white lady hovers in the blackness. a 1969/70 photo of cy twombly's bed by ugo mulas
Bela Lugosi, Bed

Is this where the mattress ended up? The bedroom is not in Horst, and this Mulas is not in Homes & Studios. The carpet, the velvet, the sheets, Twombly’s love affair with green didn’t start in Bassano. The Kiss (Bela Lugosi) is one of Warhol’s earliest screenprints, which he made himself, on paper. On November 22, 1963.

[a few weeks later update] As I was saying…

This photo of the Twombly sofa is apparently from 1969, by Mulas. Which means every photographer at via Monserrato since then decided NOT to photograph this sofa. They’re all implicated. The Mulas interior shots were also apparently for/published in Vogue Italia in 1971 [not Jul/Aug, Nov, or Dec.] Also, here is a 1968 fashion shoot in Twombly’s apartment.

Previously, related: Cy Twombly’s Homes, Picassos

‘decorative but not great’

untitled 2005 is a 10 ft tall 16 ft wide painting by cy twombly with giant, tight, and overlapping loops of drippy red paint. it was resold by christie's in 2017
Cy Twombly, Untitled, 2005, 10 x 16 feet or so, pitched to Jeffrey Epstein by Christie’s, November 2017

On Tuesday, November 7, 2017, a Christie’s executive wrote, “Dear Jeffrey [Epstein], will you be coming into view our upcoming sales? Lots of exciting works worth viewing.”

Wednesday morning, he said he’d adjust his New York schedule, and she emailed right back, Great come before the weekend, “There is a large Twombly [Lot 15B] that is suitable for your large wall!”

Continue reading “‘decorative but not great’”

Cy Twombly Not Writing

a brushy mottled dark green background of an 8 by 12 foot painting has several washed white loops like cursive ls or calligraphy, each marked by long thin vertical drips of the watery paint. note 1 by cy twombly at sfmoma
Cy Twombly, Note I, 2005-07, acrylic on three wood panels in artist frame, 98 x 146 in., photo by Ian Reeves, collection SFMOMA

Thierry Greub’s research on the inscriptions in Cy Twombly’s work fills multiple volumes. Dean Rader wrote an entire book of poems from experiencing Twombly’s work. Reading Greub’s essay on Rader’s book and being caught in the flow of Twombly’s writing, I found myself suddenly stuck on the marks on this painting, Note I from III Notes from Salalah (2005-07).

They look like letters—Greub calls them, “lasso-shaped ‘ls’ and ‘es’ of Twombly’s writing-evoking traces of painting.” When the Art Institute showed the series in 2009, James Rondeau made reference to the “pseudo-writing” of the blackboard paintings, and to how the loops and apostrophe-like strokes interpreted “the calligraphic nature of printed Arabic.”

Honestly, I’m fine either/or/and/also, but I am just stymied by how they were made. The strokes on the right seem to start from the right, but each loop/stroke seems to start from the left. And the strokes on the left seem to start from the left. The point is, I think the strokes and drips tell this entire story of their making, yet they are not written. They look like letters or calligraphy, but they’re not made by writing.

cy twombly's loopy dgaf handwritten poster for his show, 3 notes from salalah at larry gagosian galley [heh] via crispi 16 dec 15, feb 16, all in fat blue india ink brush, and then roma written in like ballpoint pen in the bottom right corner, in case you didn't know where via crispi was, loser. this poster from 2008 is now for sale at the gagosian shop for 1250 us dollars
vs. Cy Twombly writing: Three Notes from Salalah exhibition poster from Gagosian Rome, 2008, via Gagosian Shop

The Art Institute goes on, “Although ostensibly based on writing, the paintings are also specifically indebted to place,” and then heads straight to the lush, green, tropical landscape of Salalah in Oman. Meanwhile, the only place I can picture is Twombly’s tiny storefront studio in downtown Lexington, Virginia where the series was painted. Because each Note is three wood panels, each 8×4 feet, like sheets of plywood, joined together, into a massive wall. Did he join them first? Or join two and add one later? Could the studio even fit all three Notes at once? Twombly made these when he was 80. The mind may reel, but it’s nothing compared to Twombly’s arm.

“What burns through existence to endlessness?” Dean Rader’s Meditations on Cy Twombly [ronslate]