This volume includes brief comments by Heiner Bastian, color plates of 24 Short Pieces (1973), and a catalogue, which includes details about the materials used and production of the series. Bastian opens his remarks with the assertion that “the written word is the figure of gradual acquisition, the impatient and invisible Fury of return.” He focuses on the role of writing in Twombly’s practice, adding that “the connotation of the written word is its possessiveness.” He argues that Twombly “substitute[s] language for expression that suspends and interrupts the discourse.” He draws connections to Ezra Pound’s poetry and the Odyssey, He describes their locations of creation, framing the drawings as both “a journey through a changing landscape of changing seasons” and a record or echo of Twombly remembering that journey. He refers to the drawings as “reality without insight,” contemplating the relationship between language and interpretation in Twombly’s practice. Bastian offers formal analyses of the series and asserts that the artist “organizes the entire cycle in intervals.” He concludes that the series “describe[s] nothing and do[es] not seek to define, but they say, for each itself: thus it is and here it is…”

Those researching Twombly’s works on paper may also consult: Cy Twombly: Fifty Years of Works on Paper (2005) in either the Hermitage or Serpentine editions, Cy Twombly: Fifty Years of Works on Paper, published by the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (2015), and major monographs on Twombly’s practice that discuss works on paper, such as Richard Leeman’s Cy Twombly: A Monograph (2005). For more on related artworks produced in the same period, see also Cy Twombly: Œuvres sur papier 1973–1977, Musée de Grenoble (2023).

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Cy Twombly. 24 Short Pieces. Edited by Heiner Bastian. With a text by Heiner Bastian. Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 1989; 64 pages; fully illustrated. English/German edition.