This catalogue was published on the occasion of the 2018 exhibition In Beauty it is finished: Drawings 1951–2008, which commemorated the publication of the final volume of the catalogue raisonné of works on paper.  It includes a brief preface by Larry Gagosian, David Anfam’s essay “Pastness,” color reproductions, and an illustrated list of works exhibited.

Anfam opens with what he considers to be the “implicit existential edge of drawing” (7), identifying continuity from the cave paintings at Lascaux through Twombly himself. He identifies Arshile Gorky as “his most apt precursor” (7) and notes Twombly’s admiration for Gorky. He specifically invokes Gorky’s Summation (1947) and Abstract (Abstraction) (1946), connecting these to Twombly’s Untitled (To Sappho) (1976) and Paesaggio (1980) through their shared “blending [of] the pastoral and the erotic” (8). He then turns to Jackson Pollock—specifically, his Scent (1955)—as a “template for Twombly’s ravishing floral pieces” (11). He then asserts that it is specifically through writing that Twombly differentiated himself from the New York School, moving away from what he terms the Abstract Expressionist “crisis of signification” (11). He frames Twombly’s work on paper as deeply connected to his writerly instinct, with paper as “the tabula rasa that awaits scripture, whether sacred or profane” (12), and argues that Twombly both acquiesces to and resists the terms set by his predecessors. He offers detailed readings of each version of Twombly’s Treatise on the Veil (1968 and 1970 respectively). Turning to Twombly’s literary references, he contemplates the consequences of Twombly’s predilection for fragments, drawing on Sigmund Freud’s conception of melancholia and Charles Baudelaire’s “passion for beauty and its sorrowful demise” (15). Quoting Omar Khayyám, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Rainer Maria Rilke, Anfam concludes that Twombly’s “creative drive deserves a neologism: pastness” (17).

Those researching Twombly’s works on paper may also consult: Cy Twombly: Works on Paper, published by Galerie Karsten Greve (2013), Cy Twombly: Fifty Years of Works on Paper, published by the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (2015), Cy Twombly: Fifty Years of Works on Paper, published by the Hermitage Museum (2005), and major monographs on Twombly’s practice that discuss works on paper, such as Richard Leeman’s Cy Twombly: A Monograph (2005). 

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Published in 2018 on the occasion of the exhibition Cy Twombly. In Beauty it is finished: Drawings 1951–2008 at Gagosian Gallery West 21st Street, New York (March 8 – April 25, 2018). 

Cy Twombly. In Beauty it is finished: Drawings 1951–2008. Text by David Anfam. Published by Gagosian, 2018. 140 pages, fully illustrated. English edition.