This exhibition catalogue, published by Galerie di Meo, Paris in 1989, includes an essay by Bernard Blistène reproduced in French, Italian, English, and German, as well as color reproductions of artworks, a brief biography of the artist, a bibliography, a list of exhibitions to date of publication, and a list of works exhibited. 

Blistène’s essay takes aim at the state of critical literature surrounding Twombly’s practice by 1989, referring to the “vacuity or the quasi-total absence of analyses and discussions concerning it” (13). He lauds Roland Barthes’s writing about the artist, but argues that the perceived lack of critical discourse surrounding the artist’s practice allowed only “belated recognition and celebration” (13). He notes especially the lack of attention to Twombly’s practice by American critics during the 1960s and 1970s, attributing this to the dominance of Clement Greenberg’s critical apparatus and his disdain for reference and “psychological content.” Though Blistène argues that Twombly does in fact fulfill many of Greenberg’s criteria for abstract art, he nevertheless proclaims that Twombly’s lines and symbols “wander to the point of refusing any form of program” (14). He grapples with the role of writing for Twombly’s paintings, both in the form of his inscriptions and in the form of critical reception, writing that his oeuvre’s “nature is to resist the power of speech to the point of wishing to absorb it” (14). Citing Arthur Rimbaud, Blistène finds that Twombly negotiates a balance between formalism and modernism in which “the more the art of painting has been reaffirmed in its limits, the more the affirmations and limits have been rejected” (15). He draws on Gilles Deleuze and Henri Bergson to evaluate Twombly’s line and the depth of feeling it conveys, concluding that these features taken together do ultimately constitute “action painting,” whether or not Greenberg recognized it as such.

As the exhibition included primarily artworks produced before 1970, for more on Twombly’s early practice, see also major retrospective 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’s Inscriptions (2022); Cy Twombly: A Retrospective, ed. Kirk Varnedoe (1994); 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 Twombly at Galerie Di Meo, Paris (September 29 – December 23, 1989).

Twombly. Text by Bernard Blistène. Published by Galerie Di Meo, Paris, 1989; 67 pages, illustrated.