Uninhibited expression
Andrew Lambirth
Cy Twombly: Fifty Years of Works on Paper „Sopentine GalIvy, until 13 June
At, the Serpentine is a stupendous retropective of drawings and paintings on paper by Cy Twombly, loaned from his own private collection, and many of them not previously seen in public. For anyone who knows and loves Twombly's work, the exhibition is an event of considerable moment, but for the uninitiated there may be difficulty in determining what all the fuss is about. Twombly, born in Lexington, Virginia in 1928, is billed as 'one of the most significant artists of today', yet many may visit the Serpentine's light-filled galleries and see only a lot of meaningless and messy scribbles. Here is a case of an artist whose work definitely benefits from a little contextual information.
Twombly studied art in Boston and New York before attending the famous Black Mountain College (1951-2), where he was taught by Kline and Motherwell and met the young Robert Rauschenberg. The pair travelled together during 1952 in Spain, North Africa and Italy, and it was to the culture of the Mediterranean, its ancient art and mythology, that Twombly was irresistibly and lastingly drawn. After a period of further travel, he settled in Rome in 1957. His subsequent reputation as an artist of distinct and poetic originality was slow to build, developing first in Europe and only later in America. Yet he remains an American artist whose roots are in Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism, though his principal (albeit cryptic) focus is upon Europe and its history, both actual and mythological.
In 1953, back in America, Twombly had been drafted into the army and sent to Georgia for courses in cryptography. The influence of this training can be discerned in his later work and his habit of drawing 'blind', or with the `wrong' hand, to sabotage his own facility. Scribble and handwriting have become instantly recognisable leitmotifs of his mature work, and this interest in calligraphic marks may be traced as much to the sinuous braids of Jackson Pollock's imagery as to Paul Klee's preoccupation with graffiti. Twombly's intensely personal mark-making, which operates between the categories of painting and drawing, feeding off both, owes something to surrealist automatism, but is by no means purely instinctive. There is a strong guiding will at work here, despite the apparent and teasing incoherence.
The first of some 60 works in the exhibition is an untitled monotype of 1953, inventive and organic, already assured in its handling. By the next year, scribble has emerged as the dominant mode of markmaking, in two vibrant colour pencil and crayon drawings which face you in the first gallery. These are very beautiful, energetically deploying a subtle range of reds and greens and pinks, oranges and blacks. Nearby hangs a more restrained composition in pencil and white house paint. Already the two extremes of Twombly's work are in evidence: the baroque and the austere. There is something achingly sensitive about the mark-making, but not at all tentative. The viewer is suddenly made aware of the sheet of paper, every bit of which is present and activated, particularly the edges. This is an inclusive art which occupies the mind like a new and haunting melody.
Twombly is never precious about his materials, preferring cheap 4H pencils and ordinary house paint, happy to use staples and Scotch tape when necessary, collaging with flair rather than neatness. An early collage, 'Untitled' of 1959, employs screws of paper and glue in an almost monochromatic arrangement. It's an unexpected work, scruffy yet curiously satisfying, like a much-needed shower of rain in a dry summer.
Another piece includes a postcard of the theatre at Delos. There are four goldframed sheets of seeming calculations and diagrams (each called `Bolsena' and dating from 1969), some drawings more obviously minimalist in construction, employing blocks of colour or collage, and four classic white wax scribble drawings on grey paint grounds, which relate to the famous 'Blackboard Paintings'.
Not every line is trembly and jittery. A
series of enveloping red whirlpool mouths from 1982 is as near as Twombly comes to being unambiguous. The tripartite 'Pan' (1975) consists of a collaged illustration of crossed chard leaves from the Revue Horticole, with a separate sheet scrawled with the words Pan and Panic and embellished with scuffings of brown and red pigment. It's oddly endearing rather than minatory. In 'Mars and the Artist' and 'Apollo and the Artist', both of the same year, the artist seems to be depicted as a crocus in bloom at the bottom of the worked-over image. Cruel or tender? Meaning remains deliberately elusive. The recent work has become ever more painterly, increasingly vivid in palette, wild and explosive (even joyous) in uninhibited expression.
This is an art of traceries and textures, of overlaying and obliteration, obsessed with the past, with a passion for ruins. At once elegiac and subversive, it is predominantly urban not rural, though the imagery becomes increasingly floral over time. It's biomorphic and sexual, instinct with life and potential. (As Twombly says, 'I think of myself as a Romantic symbolist. My painting is not fixed. I show things in flux: I respond to the Greek love of metamorphosis.') The work has humour. Its European character gives it an old world charm, but it retains an underlying American toughness, or bite. Within its frame meet the connoisseur and the child. It embodies the imperative urges described so succinctly by Catullus: 'I hate and I love, and if you ask me why, I do not know, but I feel it and am torn in two.'
This remarkable exhibition was organised by the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, where it opened last year, before travelling to Munich and Paris. This is the last official venue of the tour, though it is rumoured that it will be shown in America before being disbanded. It deserves to be a popular success, and will no doubt be mobbed by art students starved of real sustenance by an overreliance on the aridities of Richter et al. I just hope it doesn't precipitate a frenzy of scribbling among hilarious and inebriated college-goers. Twombly's work is strong wine, and deserves more respect — and attempted understanding — than that.
Twombly's is a rare and unusual vision, his stance uncompromising. You will see no work like this by anyone else, and its originality can be disturbing. Do not seek a literary appeal in it, despite its formal reliance upon the written word, unless a knowledge of the Greek myths reinterpreted in an oblique and wayward fashion is readily acceptable to you. Even then, myth expertise will not help those who refuse to look at it unblinkered by preconceptions of what constitutes a drawing. For this work, trust to your eyes and assess mark and line, colour and texture for what they are. Then the sensual truth will emerge and the pleasure begin.
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