This exhibition catalogue includes David Shapiro’s essay “Some Notes Toward Twombly: A Man Without a Boat, or a A Boat For Everybody,” two poems by David Shapiro and Patricia Waters, color reproductions, and a list of works exhibited. Shapiro reflects on Twombly as an “‘Egyptian’ painter” (5), writing that “[t]he painting lives out this doubled, haunted world, essentially one of reflection, like [Claude] Monet” (6). He cites Winter’s Passage (1985) as an antecedent for The Coronation of Sesostris, He considers each panel in turn, drawing on sources ranging from Ludwig Wittgenstein to Valery Larbaud, and offers historical background on Sesostris and Egyptian mythology. Shapiro draws on Twombly’s peers and interlocuters to articulate the resonances of the cycle, e.g., drawing connections to John Cage’s String Quartet and Six Violin Pieces (both 1950). He turns to discussion of the respective roles of color and imagery in the cycle, and repeatedly returns to Frank O’Hara’s early characterization of Twombly’s work as “funereal and witty” (as quoted on 16). He claims that “Twombly’s work emerges as the marriage of [Marcel] Duchamp and [Paul] Cézanne” (17), and in keeping with these more modern references, goes on to assert that “we must agree with those who have found in him no antiquarian” (18). He turns to Ezra Pound to make sense of the cycle as “essays, personal essays on restless life in a public scale” (20). He concludes with discussion of Twombly as a “refiner” (23).

For more on Twombly’s engagement with Sesostris, see also Mary Jacobus’s “Time-Lines: Rilke and Twombly on the Nile,” Tate Papers (2008) and Richard Leeman’s Cy Twombly: A Monograph (2005). For further discussion of Twombly’s later practice and related paintings, see also: Cy Twombly, published by the Centre Pompidou (2016); Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons, ed. Nicholas Serota (2008); Mary Jacobus, Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint (2016);Thierry Greub, Inscriptions (2022); Cy Twombly, published by Gagosian Gallery (2016); Dominique Baqué’s Cy Twombly: Sous le signe d’Apollon et de Dionysos (2016); Nela Pavlouskova’s Cy Twombly: The Late Paintings 2003–2011 (2015); and Cy Twombly: Making Past Present, eds. Christine Kondoleon and Kate Nesin (2020). 

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Cy Twombly: Coronation of Sesostris at Gagosian Gallery, New York (November 11, 2000 – January 27, 2001).

Cy Twombly. Coronation of Sesostris. Essay by David Shapiro. Published by Gagosian Gallery. New York, 2000. 42 pages, 10 color illustrations.