This volume includes a foreword from Guy Tosatto, Jonas Storsve’s “Cy Twombly: Œuvres sur papier 1973–1977,” Guy Tosatto’s “Cy Twombly, messager des dieux,” Sophie Bernard’s “De la page blanche à la pensée de l’archipel. Considérations sur l’œuvre de Cy Twombly dans les années 1973–1977,” and Peter Laugesen’s “Écriture.” It also includes reproductions of work, a selected anthology of texts and chronology prepared by Sophie Bernard, a list of monographic exhibitions, a list of works exhibited, and a bibliography.
Storsve’s text offers an overview of the exhibition and its framing, emphasizing the role of poetry, Greco-Roman mythology, and nature (“la poésie, la mythologie gréco-latine et la nature sont parmi les principals sources d’inspiration de Twombly” [14]). He discusses each artwork or series included in the exhibition, with longer reflections on Natural History. Part II—Some Trees of Italy (1976) and The Shepheardes Calender (1977). Tosatto draws on Twombly’s practice of drawing in the dark during his military service in 1953, use of white space, and writing of inscriptions as key features of his drawing practice. Bernard takes up solipsism, cartography, and utopianism as frameworks for Twombly’s works on paper, drawing on Stéphane Mallarmé and Roland Barthes and suggests connections to Aby Warburg and his famously idiosyncratic Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. She characterizes the artist as producing his own “humanist encyclopedia” (“sa propre encyclopédie humaniste” [40]). Laugesen draws on Black Mountain College in his poetic entry, offering meditations on Twombly’s intellectual world that range from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to John Cage’s silent music.
Scholars may also wish to consult other major catalogues and monographs, such as: Richard Leeman’s Cy Twombly: A Monograph (2005); Mary Jacobus’s Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint (2016); Thierry Greub, Inscriptions (2022); Cy Twombly: A Retrospective, ed. Kirk Varnedoe (1994); Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters, ed. Nicholas Cullinan (2011); and Cy Twombly: Making Past Present, eds. Christine Kondoleon and Kate Nesin (2020). Additional texts focusing Twombly’s works on paper include: Cy Twombly: Works on Paper, published by Galerie Karsten Greve (2013) and Cy Twombly: Fifty Years of Works on Paper, published by the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (2015).
(Publication description by Jamie Danis)
Published in 2023 on the occasion of the exhibition Cy Twombly. Œuvres sur papier (1973–1977) at the Musée de Grenoble (June 3 – September 24, 2023).
Cy Twombly. Œuvres sur papier (1973–1977). Edited by Jonas Storsve, Guy Tosatto and Sophie Bernard. With contributions by Sophie Bernard, Peter Laugesen, Jonas Storsve, Guy Tosatto. Published by LienArt, 2023; 240 pages; fully illustrated.