Still from Cy Dear
Andrea Bettinetti, Italian director specialized in documentaries and author of Piero Manzoni artista (2013), Swinging Roma (2015), Fabio Mauri - ritratto a luce solida (2016), Arte Povera, Appunti per la Storia (2024) among others, was interviewed in his studio in Monza by Ramona Ponzini about Cy Dear, a film documentary directed by Bettinetti in 2018 and produced by Michele Bongiorno for Good Day Films, in collaboration with the Cy Twombly Foundation and the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio.
Cy Dear offers an intimate portrait of Cy Twombly through the narrative voice of Nicola Del Roscio and the accounts of friends and colleagues who accompany the audience to discover the man behind the artist.
RP (Ramona Ponzini) – Let's start with a classic question: why Twombly?
AB (Andrea Bettinetti) – I grew up in a home filled with the love of art from the late 1800s, early 1900s, and still a love of the beautiful, of museums. I have never been extraneous or indifferent to art. In 2012 a colleague at IED (Istituto Europeo di Design) in Milan, where I am still teaching, asked me how to digitize a film. It was an unpublished film portraying Piero Manzoni. Just at that time Sky Arte was in its infancy, so, combining the two intents, I went to the Fondazione Piero Manzoni - 2013 would have been the 50th anniversary of his death and the 80th anniversary of his birth - thus the documentary Piero Manzoni artist was born, produced by Michele Bongiorno's Good Day Films.
Two years later I proposed to Michele a new documentary, set in Rome in the 50s and 60s, which produced incredible things in the artistic field and I am not referring only to visual arts but also to cinema, to literature: the title of the film is Swinging Roma.
I have always loved Mario Schifano just as I have always loved Cy Twombly very much. I wanted to talk about both of them in the film, which in the end, however, necessarily turned out to be a much more choral portrait, not focused only on their figures.
While shooting the film, I met Nicola Del Roscio - Twombly's long-time collaborator and archivist for over forty-five years - in Venice, at Ca' Pesaro, which in 2015 dedicated a great exhibition to the artist, entitled Cy Twombly. Paradise. Nicola was introduced to me by Pepi Marchetti Franchi, Director of the Gagosian Gallery in Rome, who had already supported me in the project on Piero Manzoni.
Nicola was immediately very willing to be interviewed but only under the condition of finding a location with a tree. We found a hotel in whose garden there was a beautiful tree and we filmed the interview there. Nicola told about Twombly with a poetic attitude. A gentle soul. As I am very sensitive to the emotional aspect of storytelling, he was a revelation for me. From there I started thinking about a film entirely dedicated to Cy Twombly.
RP – How did you approach the account of Twombly, as a person and artist?
AB – We met Nicola in Switzerland together with Michele Bongiorno and Michele Casiraghi, a mutual friend, to explain our project to him. During that meeting, hearing Nicola talk about Twombly, I became convinced that he should have been the narrative voice of the whole film. No one can narrate Twombly better than Nicola. He was cautious but at the same time curious about what approach to the figure of Twombly we wanted to take in the documentary. He didn't say yes right away, but in the end he agreed. And I am convinced that he is the secret to the success of this film documentary. Without Nicola, who takes you by the hand in telling the story, you wouldn't really know Twombly.
I am convinced of that. I tend not to see my films again once they come out, but thinking about seeing Cy Dear again now, the conviction is clear.
RP – When did you start actively working on the making of the film?
AB – In 2016 we talked to Nicola again and we began filming in Gaeta the following year, early 2017. Then I joined Nicola in Paris, at the Centre Pompidou, where a big retrospective dedicated to Cy Twombly and curated by Jonas Storsve was going to open. We closed the filming at the end of the year, again in Gaeta. Cy Dear was later presented at MOMA on April 25, 2018: that day would have been Twombly’s 90th birthday.
Cy Twombly
Untitled, 1989
[Gaeta]
Collage: (drawing paper, tracing paper, shredded drawing paper, glue), acrylic, wax crayon, pencil on paper
40 15/16 x 29 3/8 in.
© Cy Twombly Foundation
RP – The travelling dimension, the continuous moving from one place to another belonged very much to Twombly. You gave a full portrait of this aspect through the narrative of the film. Not only that. The film starts in Gaeta and closes in Gaeta: this circularity is not only narrative, but it was also part of the working process.
AB – Yes, that's right. We had determined with Michele that the work should somehow restore the sense of change, of the cycle of seasons. Because this passing of time is there so much in Twombly's works. There is a work entitled and dedicated to the four seasons. In my opinion the sense of the seasons of life is present in his work. I wanted to return this dimension of his constant movement, this coming and going from the United States to Italy, but also all the beauty that his works bring with them. What Jonas Storsve calls sheer beauty.
RP – How did you choose the archival material?
AB – Twombly was a very shy person. There is not so much video or photographic material which especially portrays the early years of his career. Maybe you casually find him in some shots at an opening, where you catch a glimpse of him among the audience. I collected most of the material during the making of Swinging Roma. Obviously, the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio and the Cy Twombly Foundation helped us.
When I was specifically looking for video material, I found some footage furtively shot by Twombly's assistant.
RP – Tiger!
AB – Yes, Tiger! A great man! A very sweet person, of whom I am very fond, whose name is actually Viorel Grasu, but Twombly called him with tenderness and irony “Tiger”. I met him together with his son Cristian Grasu and interviewed them at the Miramare restaurant by the sea.
RP – The sea… a recurrent theme in Twombly's work.
AB – The sea and boats, other elements so present in his works. These strange boats leading to the afterlife. Boats are metaphors.
Another thing I always glimpse in Twombly is the sense of the transience of life.
Cy Twombly, Bay of Naples, 1994
© Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio
RP – Your love for him is evident in the film. You have returned a complete picture of his figure, both from a human and an artistic point of view. You offer insights into some of his works that are real keys to understanding his entire production.
AB – I actually received some criticism about the film as well. One lady told me that it misses Twombly's military period, when he worked in a cryptography unit, and how the use of writing and words in his works comes from that very experience. I had actually talked about that with Nicola at the Pompidou. Later I decided not to include that excerpt of conversation. But one always has to make choices in the editing process.
RP – You come however to explore the aspect of the use of the written word.
AB – Yes. The elements are there. That little mention is missing. But we decided to opt more for drawing. For example, talking about the works which include drawings made by children.
RP – That is an incredible moment in the film because not only does it restore the essence of the artistic gesture, of the pure sign, which is that of a child. But I also found a poetic construction in your telling of this element, that is, a kind of chiastic structure of the narrative around Twombly's connection to the childish gesture: first you bring back the testimony of the Stocchi family, of Twombly acting on the children's drawings, then moving on to the gesture of another child - Fabiana, Anna Paparatti's daughter - who acts on a Twombly’s work.
AB – I didn't know about Fabiana’s episode before I went to interview the artist Anna Paparatti. I actually chose to interview Anna for a different anecdote that I didn’t include in the end, because this story of Fabiana drawing on a Twombly work was much stronger. The anecdote that I had originally asked Anna to tell about putting the emphasis on the fact that Twombly was part of the Roman scene but at the same time he wasn't. Maybe you would spend the evening with him but then he wasn't really part of the same group as you. As if he was somehow always on the sides, a little bit outside of everything. Which is a characteristic that also emerges from Gabriele Stocchi's and Luisa Gardini's memories, when they say that he didn't want to make an effort to speak in Italian. It would have been a bit of a repetition to report this aspect. Instead, when Anna told me Fabiana’s episode, I was impressed. Anna then has a really funny way of telling. And she described in such tones that "desperate" moment. She made me laugh a lot.
The other thing I liked for this film was to have great people to narrate Twombly.
When I tell biographies, whether they are artists, filmmakers or actors, whoever, I'm definitely interested in what and why they do it, but I especially like to understand what kind of people they are, to empathize with them. I think that the persons who manage to do something really incredible cannot be ordinary people, they must have something more, and I have to try to grasp that something, to be able to catch a little piece of it, to grab a flap of it.
Still from Cy Dear
RP – In this regard, at the beginning of the film you dwell on a plastic chair, an ordinary seaside bar chair with ice cream ads on it: Twombly's favourite chair. And by contrast, the chairs in his studio that were always occupied by working materials and on which no one could sit...
AB – It's my attempt to somehow manage to make a connection with the person I'm narrating. To be able to grasp something almost always emotional or sentimental, whether it's positive or negative. It doesn't matter.
RP – At one point in the narrative, the curator Carlos Basualdo appears and tells about how Nicola was protective of Cy almost as of his palms, taking us back to the incipit of the film, to the filming of Nicola in his garden in Gaeta: it is a moment that exemplifies another characteristic of Cy Dear, namely that temporal counterpoint of the narrative that makes you move back and forth in the time of the film but also of Twombly's life, emphasizing how his figure was timeless, beyond time. That same dimension emphasized by Basualdo himself.
AB – That's exactly why I wanted the film to start and end in the same place. The process took a year, but it's a year that repeats endlessly. It is almost a timeless moment, despite being temporal.
Another key aspect is Nicola's receptivity: it is as if he knew what I needed and laid it in front of me. If I was awake I grasped it, if I was not awake I missed it. He was acutely aware of everything that was needed for the film.
Of all the things for which I am happy with this film documentary (it is normal that after some time I may also catch aspects of it that I would have approached differently) Nicola is perhaps the greatest: Cy is the protagonist of the film, but the real protagonist is Nicola and Cy and Nicola are not separable. Where Cy's narrative does not reach, Nicola makes up for it.
RP – To illustrate that you chose some very touching archival material: I'm referring to that video where Cy and Nicola are in Puglia and the artist leans his hand on Nicola's shoulder...
AB – Viorel made that video! He used one of the first cell phones with which it was possible to make videos, so the quality is very low. Viorel sometimes hid while making videos with the cell phone, sometimes he showed up in the footage, but always recording from a distance. And I really liked the idea of grafting the very particular movement of these images onto the film.
There are not many videos that I found, and finding them was not easy. Processing the images was then complex because these films, made in these strange formats, have a definition that doesn't allow you to enlarge them much. I decided then to treat them almost as if they were Super8, with a mask. I didn't want them to have dry, marked edges. And the image that "blurs" belongs to Twombly, I think of his photographs. I decided to use a mask that would not give back the idea of the electronic format as much as an analog shot. It is thanks to the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio that I was able to draw on such material.
Like that spectacular video where you can hear Twombly's voice calling Viorel: Tiger! Tiger!
When you work on such an immense artist you have the opportunity to meet great people. And the people I met during this shoot are all of them.
Still from Cy Dear
Cy Twombly and Viorel Grasu ("Tiger") at the artist's studio
RP – At one point Nicholas Serota, the former Tate Modern Director and art historian, describes Twombly attributing a "slow languid restlessness" to him... a continuous, perpetual, inner motion that moved him.
AB – Another thing I wanted to do and that I think was right after some time, was not wanting to keep cutting and jumping from one character to another. I wanted the encounters to be returned complete, not interspersed with other stories. The summary, the core of a particular encounter goes exactly to that point in the film and not to another. In other films I have done that but in this particular case I wanted the viewer to meet these characters, not run into them. It's different. You don't suddenly meet them. You go there. We go there together. We go or wait, for example, for Carlos Basualdo to come to Nicola's house. I wanted everyone to have a chance to say whatever they had to say and each encounter to have a circularity.
In this way you understand not only Twombly but also the person who is telling the story. I then like to meet people inside their homes, setting them in a personal context. Going to Stocchi’s house was a rewarding experience, immersed in works of art... And there I found that family portrait that allowed me to talk about the connection between Twombly, the pictorial gesture and the child's mark. As you enter their homes you immediately get an idea of the people you have to interview.
RP – And it's no coincidence that we're doing this interview in your home, in your studio, which is a kind of Wunderkammer that says a lot about you.
AB – It is difficult for houses to lie. For better or for worse. It's hard that finishing an interview with persons conducted in their home you may think you were expecting something different. As soon as I enter a house I can already predict how the interview will go. What I see allows me to build an idea of what the character is, and I am rarely betrayed.
Andrea Bettinetti's studio
Ph. Ramona Ponzini
RP – I'd also like to talk about how you worked on the non-visual, the sound, and two moments in particular: on the one hand, how you let in the noise of the waves during Viorel's interview with his son in a very calibrated way, and on the other hand, the entry of Twombly's piano recordings anticipating Nicola's story about Twombly being a "pianist."
AB – The piece of Cy playing the piano was a surprise made for us by Nicola. Truly the so-called icing on the cake.
The credit for the use of sound in the film goes to the film editor, Giovanna Ferrara, who is a singer. Every time we worked together she dedicated completely to the audio. Her sensitivity is that of a musician. And she had a great time working with Eraldo Bernocchi, the author of the film's soundtrack, to whom she gave very specific directions on how long to keep a song on a particular sequence. A real dialogue was established between musicians, rather than between a film editor and a musician. And she also intervened in how the music comes in.
Her sensitivity, not my merit. Giovanna has a special sensitivity and she is very interested in the others. And I find these characteristics emerge in the editing.
RP – Is there anything you would like to add? Any aspects that we haven't touched on?
AB – I would say no, except to reiterate the importance and the centrality of the people I met and the fact that I enjoy telling about them. It is incredible the love that surrounded Twombly, the affection that everyone felt for him. The dedication to his figure. And maybe I will be repetitive: the importance of Nicola! I will never get tired of saying that as well as I will never get tired of listening to him talk. When we meet, or we happen to walk down the street in Rome... he tells you things that make you see the city in a different way. He knows Rome very well. He points out aspects that take root inside you and germinate every time you go back to those same places and walk those streets. His sensitivity is impressive. Like when he was telling me about Cy that for a while he was constantly listening to the records of an Egyptian singer, Umm Kulthum. Another artist with an incredible story. And by telling it, Nicola was taking me inside that moment and that atmosphere. Or like when he told me about the chair with the writing "Algida”: who else would have told about a plastic chair? No one would have dwelt on it, anyone would have avoided it. He wouldn't. A red chair that becomes a motif of sweetness, of sensitivity. It is like joining the sacred to the profane, the great artist to the man.
This is Umm Kulthum
Andrea Bettinetti is a film director. Since 2000 he has been working in documentaries. He has nominated in the final five of the “Nastri d’Argento” for the documentaries Marina Cicogna, life and everything else (2022) and The Importance of Being Uncomfortable: Gualtiero Jacopetti (2012) and many of his works have been screened at festivals as well as in museums and institutions around the world. Since 2007 he has been collaborating with Istituto Europeo di Design (IED-Milan).
Ramona Ponzini is sound artist, curator and japanologist. Her debut dates back to 2005 with the project Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, focused on Japanese poetry as a privileged source of musicable lyrics, which landed on PSF Records, Japan’s cult label of artists such as Keiji Haino and Kaoru Abe. She has collaborated with prominent figures such as Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth and industrial percussionist Z’ev. Her solo project consists of unusual DJ sets contaminated by vocal interactions and sound collages. Her performances and sound works have been hosted by Castello di Rivoli - Museum of Contemporary Art, MACRO-Rome, OGR Turin, Towner Eastbourne, MAXXI L’Aquila. Ponzini is also an art and film critic. Over the years she has published her articles in Flash Art, Artribune, Duels, Il Foglio Arte, Domus, The Wire.