This catalogue, produced on the occasion of the eponymous 2004 exhibition at Gagosian Gallery London, includes an introductory essay by Robin Vousden and detailed photographs of the works included in the exhibition. Vousden’s introduction describes the experience of viewing these Untitled paintings for the first time in Twombly’s Gaeta studio. Vousden frames the paintings as additional windows onto “every gulf of every Gaeta, over a long lifetime,” (8) echoing the view out of the studio’s actual windows. He frames the set as an “autonomous” series of individual works rather than a single painting divided across many canvases (as, e.g., in Twombly’s 2001 Lepanto). In these later works, Vousden contends that “now the ideograms hold them all…ancient memories inscribed on the sky” (10). Bringing the late paintings into dialogue with the artist’s 1959 Poems to the Sea, Vousden describes the works as landscape paintings of the sea. The essay is interspersed with direct quotations from the artist about his working practice. Vousden closes with reflections on color and writing in Twombly’s practice, noting in the former case that color is “lessened, tonal and universal, or local and specific” (10) in these later paintings. In terms of writing, Vousden argues that it serves as “the antithesis of calligraphy” throughout Twombly’s practice, instead acting in “pursuit of emotional truth” (11). With the late paintings, however, Vousden sees an introduction of a calligraphic quality drawn from “the East, of Japan, of Zen” (11). Each brushstroke is framed as completing an “epic journey” (12) as the artist documents his own repeated looking out the studio window onto the Tyrrhenian Sea. The effect, for Vousden, is that of “telescop[ing] time” (13).

The rest of the volume is comprised of large-scale reproductions of detailed photographs of the paintings, which may be of particular use to scholars looking at formal qualities of the artworks. There is also an exhibition checklist included.

For further literature on later paintings in Twombly’s practice and especially connections to Japanese poetry and writing, see “Twombly’s Lapse,” chapter 8 of Mary Jacobus’s Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint (2016). Other essays on Twombly’s later work also appear in Cy Twombly: Making Past Present, eds. Christine Kondoleon and Kate Nesin (2020), Thierry Greub, Inscriptions (2022), and Cy Twombly: The Last Paintings (2012), published by Gagosian Gallery. Those interested in Twombly’s sculptures should also consult Kate Nesin, Cy Twombly’s Things (2014) and Achim Hochdörfer’s Cy Twombly: Das Skulpturale Werk (2001).

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Cy Twombly: Ten Paintings and a Sculpture at Gagosian, Britannia Street, London (May 27 – July 31, 2004).

Cy Twombly: Ten Paintings (Winter Pictures 2004) and a Sculpture. Essay by Robin Vousden. Published by Gagosian Gallery, London, 2004. 56 pages, English.