Cy Twombly.
Ortsumgehungen / Tracing Places
By Klaus-Peter Busse
By Klaus-Peter Busse
The monograph by Klaus-Peter Busse, published in German and English by Kleinheinrich in 2024, is a “travel guide” on the internal, external, cultural and biographical places that left a creative and intellectual impact on Cy Twombly, shaping his research and artistic work.
The author says: “Places, in art and literature, are more than just significant. They shape the creation of works and even guide how people approach them. Novels, poems, and pictures can become travel guides, if someone sets off in search of the places of origin of works, or visits the places they depict. Artistic works and literary texts are created in specific geographical locations, and in many cases represent such places. A very close relation can arise between geographical places and their appearance in an artistic work”.
The bilingual volume features an index and ten chapters, titled as follow: “Book, Pictures, and Places”; “Pictures and their Homes”; “Travels”; “Black Mountain”; “Paths to the Work”; “Settings”; “The Unswept Room”; “The Story of the Bird of Passage”; “Poetic Terrain” and “Seduced by Places”.
The first chapter is an introductory essay on the “cartographic net” between the places lived by the artist and their translation and assimilation in pictures, inscriptions and works. The second chapter reflects on the concept of the “topos oikeios” of Twombly’s iconographic universe and his artistic practices. Chapter three is focused on the importance of collecting travel memories, words and narratives. Chapter four comes back to the academic origins of the artist, during his days at the Black Mountain College, a place which marks a profound moment of influence in the life of the artist. Chapter five examines the mutability of perception in Twombly’s works in relation to the places and communication models in which they are exhibited, whether it be the physical location of a museum, the private space of a collection, or the abstract place of art criticism. The sixth chapter investigates the artistic approach in filling the empty place of the canvas. Chapter seven is dedicated to Twombly’s collages, which, according to the author, “delineate a distinctive work-site in his oeuvre”. In chapter eight, the author, tries to explain the importance to have biographical knowledge of the artist’s life in order to fully understand his work. The ninth chapter takes on a lyrical aspect, focusing on a "poetic region", where the author wonders “what piece of the Twombly world he made visible”. In the last chapter, the author concludes his work with a series of reflections and questions from which the idea for this volume arose, concluding his words with a series of acknowledgments.
Cy Twombly. Ortsumgehungen / Tracing Place. By Klaus Peter Busse. Münster: Kleinheinrich Verlag, 2024. German/English edition.