This volume includes a foreword by Nicola Del Roscio, reproductions of drawings introduced by Simon Schama’s “Cy Twombly,” reproductions of paintings introduced by Kirk Varnedoe’s “Inscriptions in Arcadia,” reproductions of sculptures, reproductions of photographs introduced by Laszlo Glozer’s “Twombly’s Photographs,” and Thierry Greub’s “Cy Twombly’s ‘Inverted Archaeology.’”

Simon Schama’s “Cy Twombly” first appeared in Cy Twombly: Fifty Years of Works on Paper (2005); for description, see here. Likewise, Kirk Varnedoe’s first appeared in Cy Twombly: A Retrospective; for description, see here. Note, however, that Varnedoe’s essay is abridged in the present volume; the full digitized text is publicly available through the Museum of Modern Art. For Laszlo Glozer’s essay, see Cy Twombly: Photographs 1951–2007, ed. Laszlo Glozer (2008) here; note that in the original publication, the title for the essay is “Twombly.”

Greub’s essay opens with Twombly’s participation in an excavation of a Roman bath in North Africa, referring to it as “a baptismal experience that set the direction for his artistic development” (227). Throughout, he both notes the prevalence in the secondary literature of and himself draws on “the vocabulary of archaeology: ‘layering,’ ‘fragment,’ ‘collection,’ ‘disappearance,’ or ‘discovery,’ and, in a broader sense, ‘trace,’ ‘sediment,’ ‘palimpsest’” (227). Drawing extensively on Roland Barthes’s foundational essays on the artist, Greub asserts that the artworks appear like “a cross-section of an archaeological dig” (228). He considers the role of Twombly’s inscriptions within his artworks, a consistent concern throughout his scholarly output, and addresses artworks including Untitled (To Sappho) (1976), The Italians (1961), and Olympia (1957). This text is available in the original German in Greub’s Cy Twombly: Das ungezähmte Bild.

Scholars may also wish to consult other major catalogues and monographs, such as: Richard Leeman’s Cy Twombly: A Monograph (2005); Mary Jacobus’s Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint (2016); 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)

The Essential Cy Twombly. Edited by Nicola Del Roscio; Text by Laszlo Glozer, Thierry Greub, Simon Schama, and Kirk Varnedoe. D.A.P., 2014. 240 pages; fully illustrated. German and English editions.