This monograph by Dominique Baqué includes the following chapters: “Tropisme Méditerranéen,” “Aparté: Sur La Sculpture,” “Polygraphies, Graffitis, Gribouillis, Tremblements, Tourbillons,” “Dialogiques,” “Érotiques,” a bibliography, and a list of exhibitions.

“Tropisme Méditerranéen” begins with Twombly’s early travels in Italy and addresses the frequent characterization of Twombly’s line as “childlike.” Throughout, she considers what she terms dialogics in Twombly’s practice, and so maintains oppositional pairings such as childlike and acculturated. She argues that Twombly’s relocation to Italy effected a definitive break with his American counterparts, one that she identifies in his Wilder Shores of Love (1985). Turning to Twombly’s sculpture in “Aparté: Sur La Sculpture,” Baqué characterizes them as Dionysian rather than Apollonian, offering extended readings of Cycnus (1978) and Untitled, Jupiter Island (1992). She also argues against the marginalization of Twombly’s sculptures relative to other aspects of his oeuvre. In “Polygraphies, Graffitis, Gribouillis, Tremblements, Tourbillons,” she considers the effect of Twombly’s line at length, drawing on Roland Barthes. She also considers the power of naming. In “Dialogiques,” Baqué’s overarching argument culminates in the assertion that dialogics rather than dialectics are the appropriate framework for Twombly’s practice. She writes that “Where dialectics always reconciles, dialogics sometimes maintains oppositions, digs into fault lines…white/black, writing/drawing, automatism/control, but also expressionism/classicism, myth/classical culture, and last but not least, Apollo/Dionysus” (“Là où la dialectique reconcile toujours, la diologique maintient parfois les contraires, creuse les lignes de faille…blanc/noir, écriture/dessin, automatisme/côntrole, mais aussi expressionisme/classicism, mythe/culture Classique et, enfin et surtout, Apollon/Dionysos”) (81). “Érotiques” concludes with the ongoing opposition between Apollonian and Dionysian instincts in Twombly’s repeated returns to eroticism.

Scholars may also wish to consult other major catalogues and monographs, such as: Mary Jacobus’s Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint (2016); Richard Leeman’s Cy Twombly: A Monograph (2005); Thierry Greub, Inscriptions (2022); 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); Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons, ed. Nicholas Serota (2008); and Cy Twombly: Making Past Present, eds. Christine Kondoleon and Kate Nesin (2020).

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Sous le signe d’Apollon et de Dionysos. By Dominique Baqué. Published by Les Editions du Regard, Paris, 2016. 220 pages, fully illustrate. French edition.