This volume, which brings together all of Twombly’s Letters of Resignation (1959/1967) includes Heiner Bastian’s essay “Semina Motuum” in German and English, color reproductions, and a list of works. Bastian notes that “The set has no numerical order, that is, the drawings are not numbered from 1–38, but they are reproduced here according to the artist's own sequence.” Scholars interested in this volume may also consult the two other related volumes also edited by Heiner Bastian: Cy Twombly: Poems to the Sea (1990) and Cy Twombly: 24 Short Pieces (1989).

Bastian opens his brief essay with the provocation: “What do we admire so much in the works of Cy Twombly?” Though Bastian asserts that all artists must operate to some extent in relationship to earlier authors and artists, he nevertheless finds Twombly unique in that for him “this passion becomes a dialogue of obsessions and dreams, of history and its myth, of poetry and profane graffiti.” He characterizes Twombly’s drawings as sensual, and with this argues that the artist “disrupts the essence of drawing, he denies it its calling, the iconographic centre. He does not allow its meaning to extend into reality…” He describes the conditions under which the artworks were produced and speculates about the significance of the title, though—as is typical of Bastian’s writing on Twombly—he resists offering a definitive or closed reading. He connects the Letters of Resignation to Twombly’s 1963 Nine Discourses on Commodus, a position that is relatively common throughout the literature; however, unlike most, Bastian connects the Letters of Resignation not to the initially negative critical reception of Nine Discourses on Commodus but rather its historical and conceptual content. He also identifies Leonardo da Vinci as one possible antecedent to the Letters of Resignation. He concludes that “[w[hat these lines evoke has no name, no beginning or end. Their physiognomy is the indiscernible surrender, the moment in which what can arise also grants its own disappearance.”

Scholars researching Twombly’s early practice may also consult Richard Leeman’s Cy Twombly: A Monograph (2005); Kate Nesin’s Cy Twombly’s Things (2014); Thierry Greub’s Inscriptions (2022); and Gagosian Gallery’s Cy Twombly: In Beauty it is finished: Drawings 1951–2008 (2018). Writings on Cy Twombly, ed. Nicola Del Roscio (2002) also includes primary source material from this period. 

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Cy Twombly. Letter of Resignation. Edited by Heiner Bastian. With a text by Heiner Bastian. Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 1991; 92 pages; fully illustrated. English/German edition.