This publication is the largest by volume to date on Twombly’s practice. It includes six volumes; the first includes Thierry Greub’s discursive text, followed by five volumes which diagram and attribute the 901 inscriptions Greub addresses. Vol. II spans 1953–1961, Vol. III spans 1962–1967, Vol. IV spans 1968–­1974, Vol. V spans 1975–1987, and Vol. VI spans 1988–2010. Greub describes the aim of the publication as follows: “The exhaustive survey of all Cy Twombly's handwritten notations and literary inscriptions that is presented here understands the written element in his work…as a ‘collaboration of image and words’. As well as the scriptural-visual quality of the written notations as an essential artistic element of expression, their semantics are also for the first time considered here in a comprehensive way.” (13)

Greub offers detailed formal analyses of the artworks he addresses alongside consideration of the origins of each inscription, with particular attention to works such as Twombly’s North African Sketchbooks (1953), Untitled (Rubaiyat) (1984–2002), and Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair (1985). When considering sources for inscriptions, Greub seeks to identify the precise volumes and editions used, considering, e.g., various translations and editions of Sappho’s poetry in discussing the artist’s repeated returns to the subject; this facilitates tracking of Twombly’s exact modifications and transcriptions. Throughout, Greub argues that “[t]he integration of literary texts into the gestural-abstract ensemble of imagery turns Cy Twombly's works into a site of multiple image-text relations” (200).

Scholars interested in this volume will likely also be interested in his edited volume Cy Twombly: Image, Text, Paratext (2014); those with reading knowledge of German may also wish to consult Greub’s Das ungezähmte Bild (2017), which has a similarly comprehensive scope but has a less narrow focus on the inscriptions. Scholars may also wish to consult other major catalogues and monographs, such as: Mary Jacobus’s Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint (2016), which comprehensively addresses Twombly’s poetry inscriptions; Richard Leeman’s Cy Twombly: A Monograph (2005); Cy Twombly: A Retrospective, ed. Kirk Varnedoe (1994); Cy Twombly: Œuvres sur papier 1973–1977, Musée de Grenoble (2023); Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters, ed. Nicholas Cullinan (2011); and Cy Twombly: Making Past Present, eds. Christine Kondoleon and Kate Nesin (2020).

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Cy Twombly. Inscriptions by Thierry Greub. Published by Brill/Fink, 2022. Vol. I – Vol. VI. Fully illustrated. English.