This volume includes Sienna Brown’s “Cy Twombly: The Artist’s Lexicon in Printmaking,” an exhibition checklist, and color reproductions.

Brown’s brief essay discusses Twombly’s relatively small oeuvre of prints, as well as his collaboration with Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) through Robert Rauschenberg. Brown recounts that “In 1967, Twombly traveled to Long Island with his longtime friend Robert Rauschenberg to see some of the lithographs Rauschenberg was printing. While Rauschenberg was busy in the lithography studio, Twombly began working on his own plates in the ‘etching basement’ with master printer Donn Steward. Over the next several months, Twombly returned to ULAE with Rauschenberg and another old friend, Jasper Johns, and completed a number of intaglio plates.” She engages with Twombly’s Notes I–IV (1967), and the tension between handwriting and mechanical reproduction introduced by the printmaking process. She draws connections between these prints and Twombly’s “blackboard” paintings from 1966 onwards and considers “similar effects [produced] by using aquatint and open bite in his etchings.” Similarly, Brown connects Twombly’s Night Watch (1966) with an untitled mezzotint print, describing in detail the technique used. Turning to his Sketches (1976), she recounts that “This portfolio began exactly as the name suggests: Twombly was working on plates and told ULAE founder Tatiana Grosman that they were ‘practice plates.’ Grosman explained to him that there was no such thing.” She identifies formal continuities between the prints and paintings as early as Age of Alexander (1959–60) and notes Twombly’s earliest ventures into printmaking at Black Mountain College. She concludes that “his prints can function as a synecdoche for his entire body of work.” 

For more on the artworks and themes included in this exhibition catalogue, see also Cy Twombly: Making Past Present, eds. Christine Kondoleon and Kate Nesin (2020); Lepanto: Cy Twombly, published by the Museo del Prado (2008); Cy Twombly: Lepanto, published by Gagosian Gallery (2002); and Cy Twombly: Paintings and Drawings 1954–1977, published by the Whitney Museum of American Art (1979). See also both volumes of the catalogue raisonné of Twombly’s printed graphic work, edited by Heiner Bastian. 

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Cy Twombly Prints at Craig F. Starr Gallery, New York (January 7–February 12, 2011).

Cy Twombly Prints. Text by Sienna Brown. Published by Craig F. Starr Gallery, New York, 2011. 32 pages, fully illustrated.