This volume includes Laszlo Glozer’s essay “Twombly” in German and English, photographs of works, and a list of works. Glozer describes the photographs as “a rich, thematically complete harvest” (253) and situates the photographs in context of Twombly’s broader practice. Referring to the relatively late public exhibition of Twombly’s photographs compared to his paintings and even his sculptures, Glozer writes that “this just-opened chapter, rich in perspectives, should result in an invigorating jolt for the reception of the totality” (253). He writes about the photographs as “transformations” in which the object and the photograph conjoin, “as if the Polaroids had traveled through time…The photographs are like time-windows, activating cultural spaces of memory going far back, beyond the private moment” (254). He describes the technical process Twombly undertook in photocopying his photographs to produce desired results and Twombly’s intermittent turns to sculpture and photography throughout his consistent painting practice. Teasing out what he finds unique about Twombly’s photographic practice, Glozer asserts that “[w]herever he aims his gaze, it becomes in the photos a sounding board for the egocentricity of poetic existence” (255). He discusses Twombly’s earlier photographs of and with interlocuters such as Franz Kline, John Cage, and Robert Rauschenberg, offering extended reflections on the differing artistic paths of Twombly and Rauschenberg. Glozer argues that “Twombly’s photos are in many ways entanglements in the essence” (257), turning his attention to the artist’s omission of human subjects in his later photographs. He discusses antecedents such as Johannes Vermeer and considers recurrent motifs, especially flowers. He concludes with reflections on ephemerality and the continuity of classicism in Twombly’s photographs in the form of composition. 

For more on Twombly’s photographs, see also From State of Mind to the Tangible: The Photographic Cosmos of Cy Twombly by Carlos Peris (2022); Cy Twombly: Photographs III 1951–2010, published by the Museum Brandhorst and Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (2011); Cy Twombly: Photographs, published by Matthew Marks Gallery (1993); Cy Twombly: Photographs, published by Brazos Projects (2000); Cy Twombly: A Survey of Photographs 1954–2011, published by Gagosian Gallery (2012); Cy Twombly: Photographs, published by Gagosian Gallery (2015) and containing a text by Mary Jacobus; and Cy Twombly: Ausgewählte Fotografien / Selected Photographs 1944–2006, published by Museum Frieder Burda (2016) and containing a text by Helmut Friedel. In the film Cy Dear (2018), Lothar Schirmer discusses Twombly’s practice of photocopying photographs as well.

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Cy Twombly. Photographs 1951–2007. Essay by Laszlo Glozer. Published by Schirmer/Mosel, 2008. 264 pages, fully illustrate. English/German edition.