Cy Twombly: Ausgewählte Fotografien / Selected Photographs 1944–2006 includes an essay by Helmut Friedel in German and English entitled “Cy Twombly—Stille Präsenz (Cy Twombly—A Quiet Presence).” Friedel begins with a 1944 photograph of the artist taken in Ongunquit, Maine in front of Charles Woodbury’s easel, reflecting on its “romantic innocence” (11). Turning to photographs of Twombly in Robert Rauschenberg’s Fulton Street studio in the 1950s, Friedel focuses on qualities of light and perspective in the photographs, writing of the combined effect that “enriched by that mysterious secrecy, it could place us under the spell of another world of our very own: the world of imagination” (12). He then turns to later photographs of peonies and roses, referring to them as “dream images” and “emotionally stimulating” (13). Friedel notes his proximity to the artist’s home in Gaeta, Italy while composing the essay, noting “I see before me the unparalleled natural spectacle of sea and sky. Indefinable levels of colored light converge” (13). For Friedel, Twombly’s photographs serve to mediate and consolidate the “grand spectacle that transpires before my eyes” (13). He reflects on Twombly’s choice of subjects and of photography as the medium in which to capture them. He concludes that “Twombly succeeds in creating an alternate reality, an option he seldom felt able to employ with regard to his own paintings…[his] photographic images extensively employ dissolution and obfuscation in order to explore an envisaged, imaginary world” (14). The essay is followed by color plates of works included in the exhibition.

For more on Twombly’s photographs, see also From State of Mind to the Tangible: The Photographic Cosmos of Cy Twombly by Carlos Peris (2022); Cy Twombly: Photographs III 1951–2010, published by the Museum Brandhorst and Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (2011); Cy Twombly: Photographs 1951–2007, ed. Laszlo Glozer (2008); Cy Twombly: Photographs, published by Matthew Marks Gallery (1993); Cy Twombly: Photographs, published by Brazos Projects (2000); Cy Twombly: A Survey of Photographs 1954–2011, published by Gagosian Gallery (2012); and Cy Twombly: Photographs, published by Gagosian Gallery (2015) and containing a text by Mary Jacobus.

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Cy Twombly. Ausgewählte Fotografien / Selected Photographs 1944–2006 at Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden (June 11 – October 9, 2016).

Cy Twombly. Ausgewählte Fotografien / Selected Photographs 1944–2006. Schirmer/Mosel. With a text by Helmut Friedel. 72 pages, 35 colour plates. German/English edition.