Cy Twombly Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings Volume III includes works produced between 1966 and 1971, including many of Twombly’s so-called “blackboard” paintings. Heiner Bastian’s introduction focuses heavily on this well-known set of works, centering what he calls “the paintings' reductivism, geometry, rhythm and their manifest self-criticality” (23). He also addresses their relationship to Minimalism and the “dialogue of the verbal and non-verbal” (28), referencing the stubborn refusal of Twombly’s lines to cohere into language even in works that directly reference communication such as his Letters of Resignation (1959–1967). Bastian also discusses Twombly’s engagement with Leonardo da Vinci at length, especially his Deluge (c.1517–18), and reflects on the influence of Edward Muybridge’s photography.

In addition to the above, this volume also catalogues Twombly’s intellectual engagements with Rembrandt, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies, and mythological figures such as the Cnidian Venus. There are other more idiosyncratic moments amidst the volume, including his abstract portraits of figures such as Giorgio Franchetti, chromatically oriented works such as Ultra Pink (1967) and Ultra Green (1967), and repeated returns to Orpheus’s veil in different guises (Veil of Orpheus, Treatise on the Veil [both 1968]). There are also early instances of his used of shaped canvases—here, primarily oval canvases—which recur later in his oeuvre. Twombly’s Untitled (1970, cat. no. 122) will be of particular interest to researchers focused on Twombly’s later Bacchus series, as this lone red iteration amongst his grayscale “blackboard” canvases presages this later turn. This volume will also be helpful to scholars focused on Twombly’s paintings completed in Bolsena, which are included here. It will also be of particular interest for scholars working on connections to Leonardo da Vinci, both in the discussion in Bastian’s introductory essay and in the works themselves documented throughout.

A critical starting point for students and scholars alike working on any of these thematics or on this time period, this volume is supplemented by related literature such as Mary Jacobus’s Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint (2016), which emphasizes connections to Rilke and Orpheus, and Cy Twombly: Orpheus, Gagosian Gallery (2017). Cy Twombly: Treatise on the Veil, 1970, published by the Menil Collection, Houston (2019) also focuses exclusively on the eponymous series. The “blackboard” paintings are discussed in most major retrospective exhibition catalogues, such as Kirk Varnedoe’s Cy Twombly: A Retrospective (1994). Recent catalogues such as Cy Twombly: Making Past Present, ed. Christine Kondeleon and Kate Nesin (2020), touch on many of the thematic concerns raised here as well and include works from this period such as Synopsis of a Battle (1968).

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Cy Twombly Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings Volume III 1966–1971. Edited by Heiner Bastian. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 1994. Fully illustrated. English/German bilingual edition.