Cy Twombly was published on the occasion of a 2008 retrospective at the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, marking the museum’s acquisition of Twombly’s notoriously divisive cycle Nine Discourses on Commodus (1963). It includes two essays—Carmen Gimenéz, “Presentación” and Francisco Calvo Serraller, “Zahorí”—as well as translations of Twombly’s rare interviews with David Sylvester and Nicholas Serota. Gimenéz recounts the vitriolic contemporary reception of Nine Discourses on Commodus and emphasizes the importance of situating the cycle relative to other major series in Twombly’s practice such as Ferragosto (1961) and Quattro Stagioni (1994). He also considers connections to Frank Gehry’s architectural forms, manifested through the presentation of the exhibition in one of his buildings. Calvo Serraller situates Twombly’s European travels in a Cold War context as well as in relation to contemporary figures attracted to the Mediterranean such as Albert Camus and Gore Vidal. He meditates on the interface between abstraction and the gestural in Twombly’s practice, along with various potential sources of inspiration, and frames the formal shift in Twombly’s practice as “una ebriedad pictórica dionisíaca [a Dionysian pictorial intoxication]” (30), attending particularly to Triumph of Galatea (1961) and Leda and the Swan (1962). He concludes by way of arguing against overly psychologizing interpretations of the paintings, emphasizing instead what he terms the dialectic between “the coup de crayon and the coup de pinceau” (33).

The volume will be particularly useful for those looking for Spanish-language editions of Twombly’s interviews; those seeking the English-language versions should consult David Sylvester, Interviews with American Artists (2000) and Cy Twombly and Nicholas Serota, “The History Behind the Thought,” in Cycles and Seasons, ed. Serota (2008). As the exhibition was conceived in conjunction with the Tate exhibition Cycles and Seasons, the exhibition catalogue will likely be of interest in connection to the present volume. Other catalogues with similar emphases include Cy Twombly Gallery: The Menil Collection, Houston, eds. Nicola Del Roscio and Julie Sylvester (2013), Cy Twombly: Making Past Present, eds. Christine Kondeleon and Kate Nesin (2020), and Cy Twombly: Treatise on the Veil, published by the Menil Collection, Houston (2019). The volume also includes a list of works that may be of interest to those focused on exhibition history. There is also an infrequently reproduced photograph of Twombly’s studio in Bassano in Teverina in 1984, taken by Heiner Bastian, that may be useful for considerations of the artist’s studio practice.

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Cy Twombly. Cycles and Seasons at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, October 28, 2008 – February 15, 2009 (previously held at the Tate Modern, London June 19 – September 14, 2008 and then traveled to Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome March 4 – May 24, 2009).

Cy Twombly. Edited by Carmen Giménez. Texts by Carmen Giménez, Francisco Calvo Serraller, David Sylvester, Nicholas Serota. Published by Guggenheim Bilbao, 2008. Spanish edition.