This exhibition catalogue includes an untitled entry by Oswald Schwemmer, Hubert Damisch’s “Quant au titre: La peinture, sous rature / In quanto al titolo: sulla pittura incombe la raschiatura,” color reproductions, a list of illustrations, selected bibliography, list of monographs and catalogues raisonnés to date of publication, list of exhibitions to date of publication, list of essays, articles, and criticism to date of publication, and list of selected exhibitions to date of publication. All text is printed in French and Italian; an English and German edition is also available. 

Schwemmer’s brief entry focuses on Twombly’s line and the relationship between symbol and signification, finding that Twombly’s signs retain ambiguity and multiplicity of meaning. He finds that this leads to “the genesis of form” (“la genèse de la forme”) rather than the transmission of a single fixed meaning (62). 

Damisch begins with a formal anaylsis of Mars and the Artist (1975), focusing in particular on the capital “M” in “Mars,” and writing that the title is “threatened from the outset by a power of erasure which would be the correlate or the reverse of any process of inscription” (“menacé dès l'abord par une puissance d'effacement qui serait le corrélat ou l'envers de tout processus d'inscription”) (83). He extends these observations to the companion artwork Apollo and the Artist (1975) and draws connections to Stéphane Mallarmé’s formulation of the crisis of painting. Damisch offers extended reflections on Jackson Pollock and Clement Greenberg as antecedents, considering Twombly’s practice through and against the theoretical frameworks they popularized, and nuances this with reference to Twombly’s formative education at Black Mountain College. Poems to the Sea (1959), Silex Scintillans (1981), The Vengeance of Achilles (1962), and The Age of Alexander (1959–1960). Damisch concludes, returning to his initial framing, that “between Apollo and Mars, the artist cannot choose” (“Entre Apollon et Mars, le peintre ne saurait choisir”) (98).

For more on Twombly’s early practice and on the artworks discussed in this exhibition catalogue, see also major retrospective catalogues and monographs, such as: Mary Jacobus’s Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint (2016); Thierry Greub’s Inscriptions (2022); Cy Twombly: A Retrospective, ed. Kirk Varnedoe (1994); Cy Twombly: Œuvres sur papier 1973–1977, Musée de Grenoble (2023); 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 at Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne.

Cy Twombly. Texts by Hubert Damisch, Oswald Schwemmer. Published by Galerie Karsten Greve, Milano, 1997. 139 pages, 38 plates. French/Italian and English/German editions.