This catalogue, published by the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, includes an essay in French from Marcelin Pleynet, “Dessins des lettres des chiffres et des mots—ou la peinture par l’oreille.” It also includes reproductions of artworks included in the exhibition, largely in black and white, as well as a list of works exhibited and a biography and bibliography until 1976. There is also a brief introduction by Suzanne Pagé, conservateur de l’ARC 2.

In his essay, Pleynet frames Twombly’s work as engaging in “our cultural pleasure” (“notre plaisir culturel”), citing Greece, Rome, Virgil and Keats as the focal points of this effect. He draws connections to artists such as Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Leonardo da Vinci, and Jackson Pollock, with the artworks operating both in relation to and radically distinguishing themselves from these antecedents. He extends Twombly’s engagement with the classical world to include classical reception, through e.g. John Keats and Stéphane Mallarmé. He offers a discursive biography of the artist, including lists of interlocutors and peers at formative locations such as Black Mountain College. Indeed, he insists upon Black Mountain College as a definitive experience for not only Twombly but also the other members of his generation in attendance, again returning to the distinctions between Twombly and peers such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns and their antecedents, e.g., Jackson Pollock. He attends closely to the links Twombly foregrounds between modern art and the erotic, both in his ideograms and more broadly in his “line.” Pleynet turns to the “truth of painting” (“vérité de la peinture”), or “that which creates beauty” (“ou ce qui fait beauté”). He discusses Twombly’s “automatism” (“l’automatisme”), with discussion ranging from drawings from 1953–1954 to the artist’s 1960 Ode to Psyche. Following an extended discussion of Keats and Ode to Psyche, Pleynet insists that Twombly surfaces “simple truths” (“la simple verité”).

For more on artworks from this period and included in this exhibition, see also Cy Twombly: Making Past Present, eds. Christine Kondoleon and Kate Nesin (2020), Cy Twombly: Œuvres sur papier 1973–1977, Musée de Grenoble (2023), Fifty Days at Iliam, ed. Carlos Basualdo (2018), Richard Leeman’s Cy Twombly: A Monograph (2005), Cy Twombly: A Retrospective, ed. Kirk Varnedoe (1994), and Dominique Baqué’s Cy Twombly: Sous le signe d’Apollon et de Dionysos (2016).

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Cy Twombly, Dessins de 1954–1976 at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, ARC 2, Paris (June 24– September 26, 1976).

Cy Twombly, Dessins de 1954–1976. Text by Marcelin Pleynet. Published by Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 1976. 52 pages. French edition.